One morn I read the brief memorial lines, Which told of a great forest's swift decay, And how they stripped the bark from off the pines, And strove to burn the beetle pest away. That night the sighing of the Boehmer Wald Pass'd through my garden in the twilight gloom; A mighty sigh, the herald of its doom, For insect hosts move on, but never halt. Sad was the dirge of those primeval trees, Grown for a thousand years; nor seem'd it strange That I, so jealous of the woodman's stroke, So chary of the lives of pine and oak, Should catch the sound of sylvan grief and change, The forest's dying voice across the seas. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...JOHN BROWN by EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON BLUEFLAGS by WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS TO LUCASTA, [ON] GOING BEYOND THE SEAS by RICHARD LOVELACE THE FIRST SNOWFALL by JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL HUGH SELWYN MAUBERLEY: 6. YEUX GLAUQUES by EZRA POUND |