Never shall English daughters and sons Be found the ashamed degraded ones To go to a priest confessing. Never shall priestcraft domineer, Or rule through spiritual fear, Without a voice to blame it; Never shall Rome's red wolf be found In sheepskin upon British ground Without a shout to shame it! + The White Oak; by Postford Brook. OUTSPREAD above an osier'd dell, Where coots on rushy hummocks dwell,— High on the trunk, all else so green,- A clump of twigs as pale as milk, A maze of ivory leaves like silk Tender and delicate and thin, As silver-paper soft within, Translucent, as if wrought in ice, If ever modern peasant thinks, No doubt at this his courage sinks, And scarcely will he pass the spot When night makes ghastlier this white blot. For nothing short of life-blood spilt With horrid mysteries of guilt, Or wicked rhyme, or hideous spell Of some damp warlock in the dell, Or evil eye, or (what is worse) The Little-London witch's curse, Or all combined, have made so white This Oak he dares not pass at night! Yet,-Poet, canst thou undertake That rustic's rod of fear to break, And well unriddle white spot yon By telling what the cause is not? It is not heat, calcining rocks, It is not fear, with face all pale,— Nor sorrow, with her dabbled veil, It is no fairy's playful spite, No necromancer's cunning might, No planet's power, nor lunar stroke, That so has bleach'd our Postford Oak! Come, then, O botanist profound, Whose learned words so grandly sound, Tell us, as half by guess you may, The reason for this Nature's Play ; Show us from chemistry's deep laws The changeless and sufficient cause Why these young leaves should now be seen Robb'd of their forest garb of green, Unskill'd to drain such natural hues From daily suns and nightly dews: Prove to us out of Liebig's Boke That yon gnarl'd boss upon our Oak As blanch'd by guilt, or bleach'd by fright. |