Ebenezer Elliott

The Maltby Yews

FAMED Maltby yews, with trunks like stone!
Are you or these gray rocks the older?
Like “death-in-life,” ye strangely grow,
And, dead alive, they sternly moulder.
Memorials grand of death and life,
That seem from time new life to borrow!
Full many a race have ye outlived
Of men whose lives were crime and sorrow.
 
Age after age, while Time grew old,
Your writhen boughs here slowly lengthened;
Storm-stricken trees! your stormy strength
Five hundred years have darkly strengthened.
Yet safe beneath your mighty roots
The busy bee hath made its dwelling;
And, at your feet, the little mouse,
With lifted hands, its joy is telling.

And high above the full-voiced lark
The sun, that loves to see you, beameth
On lonely rock or mossy trunk,
That with the rock coeval seemeth;
While, all around, the desert flowers,
Where breezes drink their freshness, gather,
As children come to kneel and bend
In prayer around their father’s father.	

O, could I write upon your gloom
A solemn verse that would not perish,
My written thoughts should warn and bless,
And nations saved the precept cherish;	
For I would bid the dark and strong
Be greatly good, and daily stronger,
That power to wrong, and will to wrong,
Like fiends divorced, might pair no longer.