I am the grisly claws
Of this crestfallen spruce that was.
Almighty tall he grew and straight—
I bore his Lordship’s weight
For some odd centuries, and great
It was to see a tree so fine
In bulk and splendid in design.
His portly tons increased with age
While I sprawled in the cellarage,
And when winds tossed his noble head
I knew how shallow was my bed,
For in my youth I led
A rambling life, quite free from toil;
I sucked the soggy surface-soil,
I did not deem it worth
The while to pierce the deeper earth
To make my base a solid thing
Against the days of reckoning.
My tangled talons forked far out,
They squirmed and twisted round about,
They radiated from my crown—
They went _along_ but never _down_.
Once now and then some minstrel breezes strolled
Our way—they bowled
Old-timers down. The ground
Was strewn with windfalls all around;
A rendezvous
For every breeze that blew
For miles—a test
I’ll warrant for the best
Of trees and doom for all the rest.
Great strapping fellows—hale and well
To look upon, but how they fell!
A crack! A bump!
A splintered, jagged stump!
And how the pride of some did smart
To have a rotted heart
Torn open thus—relentlessly exposed!
Meanwhile his Lordship posed—
The peer without a flaw!
And he was held in very proper awe—
He saw his rivals snapped like straws,
And still he stood—while I dug in my claws.
I knew that it would come—some gust would blow
To spill him low.
His great bole swayed
And trembled like a barley-blade,
His lifelong balance-line he tottered past—
The die was cast,
For there was no rebound.
The ground
Ripped as he rocked
And with the crash my roots unlocked.
In such a wise—upturned by fate,
I was exalted from my low estate.
I am a monstrous thing to see,
A flat, misshapen prodigy
Of towsie tentacles and mud and stones
And twisted bones—
A ghastly secret raised to smear
This forest nobleman’s career.