Our sorrows touch you not. We watch beside The beds of those who languish or who die, And minister in sadness, while our hearts Offer perpetual prayer for life and ease And health to the belovèd sufferers. But ye, while anxious fear and fainting hope Are in our chambers, ye rejoice without. The funeral goes forth; a silent train Moves slowly from the desolate home; our hearts Are breaking as we lay away the loved, Whom we shall see no more, in their last rest, Their little cells within the burial-place. Ye have no part in this distress; for still The February sunshine steeps your boughs And tints the buds and swells the leaves within; While the song-sparrow, warbling from her perch, Tells you that spring is near. The wind of May Is sweet with breath of orchards, in whose boughs The bees and every insect of the air Make a perpetual murmur of delight, And by whose flowers the humming-bird hangs poised In air, and draws their sweets and darts away. The linden, in the fervors of July, Hums with a louder concert. When the wind Sweeps the broad forest in its summer prime, As when some master-hand exulting sweeps The keys of some great organ, ye give forth The music of the woodland depths, a hymn Of gladness and of thanks. The hermit-thrush Pipes his sweet note to make your arches ring; The faithful robin, from the wayside elm, Carols all day to cheer his sitting mate; And when the autumn comes, the kings of earth, In all their majesty, are not arrayed As ye are, clothing the broad mountain-side And spotting the smooth vales with red and gold; While, swaying to the sudden breeze, ye fling Your nuts to earth, and the brisk squirrel comes To gather them, and barks with childish glee, And scampers with them to his hollow oak. Thus, as the seasons pass, ye keep alive The cheerfulness of Nature, till in time The constant misery which wrings the heart Relents, and we rejoice with you again, And glory in your beauty; till once more We look with pleasure on your varnished leaves, That gayly glance in sunshine, and can hear, Delighted, the soft answer which your boughs Utter in whispers to the babbling brook. Ye have no history. I cannot know Who, when the hillside trees were hewn away, Haply two centuries since, bade spare this oak, Leaning to shade, with his irregular arms, Low-bent and long, the fount that from his roots Slips through a bed of cresses toward the bay-- I know not who, but thank him that he left The tree to flourish where the acorn fell, And join these later days to that far time While yet the Indian hunter drew the bow In the dim woods, and the white woodman first Opened these fields to sunshine, turned the soil And strewed the wheat. An unremembered Past Broods, like a presence, mid the long gray boughs Of this old tree, which has outlived so long The flitting generations of mankind.