He is a tower unleaning. But he may break
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ore than a hundred years, more than a hundred feetOf timeless trunk that is too vast to shake;Only the temporal twigs are abashed on their seat, And the frail leaves of a season, which are susceptiveOf the mad humours of wind, and turn and beatEcstatic around the stem on which they are captive. But he casts the feeble generations of leaf,And naked to the spleen of the cold skies eruptiveThat howl on his defiant head in chief, Bears out their frenzy to its period,And hears in the spring, a little more rheumy and deaf,After the tragedy the lyric-palinode. . . . Now a certain heart, too young, and mortallyYoked with an unbeliever of bitter blood,Observed, as an eminent witness of life, the tree. And she exulted—being given to crying,“Heart, Heart, love is so firm an entity,It must not go the way of the hot rose dying”— For the venerable oak, delivered of his pangs,Put forth his flames of green with profuse joyingAnd testified to her with innumerable tongues. 24
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