III. ARBOR VITAE.
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ith honeysuckle, over-sweet, festoon'd;With bitter ivy bound;Terraced with funguses unsound;Deform'd with many a bossAnd closed scar, o'ercushion'd deep with moss;Bunch'd all about with pagan mistletoe;And thick with nests of the hoarse birdThat talks, but understands not his own word;Stands, and so stood a thousand years ago,A single tree.Thunder has done its worst among its twigs,Where the great crest yet blackens, never pruned,But in its heart, alwayReady to push new verdurous boughs, whene'erThe rotting saplings near it fall and leave it air,Is all antiquity and no decay.Rich, though rejected by the forest-pigs,Its fruit, beneath whose rough, concealing rindThey that will break it findHeart-succouring savour of each several meat,And kernell'd drink of brain-renewing power,With bitter condiment and sour,And sweet economy of sweet,And odours that remindOf haunts of childhood and a different day.Beside this tree,Praising no Gods nor blaming, sans a wish,Sits, Tartar-like, the Time's civility,And eats its dead-dog off a golden dish.
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