THIS is the house where, up from ages gone, Huge forests, root and leaf and bough and bole, With every bend of breeze and tempest-roll Preserved in crystal from earth's distant dawn, Again to light laboriously are drawn. No continent's tumultuous throes control Their phalanx more: they are black seams of coal And are upheaved by human will and brawn. But see, here in this ogre's castle weaves A magic power to make those forests glad And charm away their thousand ages' sleep, For more than all the beauty once they had Returns, with song of bird and rush of leaves, In the bright waving hearth-fire calm and deep. |