This is a long quotation; but it is justified by the importance of the subject, and it is quite clear that we cannot go on much longer without a School of Forestry. Diligent students can hardly fail to be forthcoming, and when once they shall have proved themselves efficient inspectors, the question of 'good' birth may be left to take care of itself.
Beyond the woods, yet half by woods inclosed, A tangled wilderness of fair growth lay; A spot where dreaming poet might have dosed Into the dawning of a fairy day; For in its desolation wild reposed Something that pointed to a past more gay, Since here and there one found the lingering trace Of caresome hands in the neglected place.
The once trim walks were coated thick with moss; Dwarfed were the garden roses, and their glow From vivid crimson paled to fainter gloss Nigh broken sun-dial; and the water's flow Had ceased to murmur in the ancient foss, Whose slopes were now with purple thyme a-blow; And on the fragments of the crumbled wall The golden wall-flower stood like seneschal.
The nut-trees made an archway overgrown, And midst the boughs the timid squirrel leapt; At eve the nightingale with mellow tone Sang with the mourning wind a dirge that crept Into all hearts--until one heart more lone Than others, gathered up the strain and wept; Nor knew if 'twere half joy or wholly grief That in the sympathetic chord had found relief.
The clouds sent flickering shadows o'er the grass, As though some spectral life were there upstirred; And as the fitful breezes onward pass, A murmur of strange voices might be heard, As though some unseen quire were chanting mass, Echoed throughout the grove by plaintive bird; And still the wanderer listening, asks for whom The wild Amen!--For whom the flowers did bloom?
The ancient summer-house with broken vane, And rotting pillars where the woodbines twine; And on a cobwebbed solitary pane In casement, that with colours once did shine, And shewed the seasons through each differing stain, Was writ in jaggèd-wise a Latin line, '_Sic transit gloria mundi_;' and below, 'My Ursula! the world is full of woe.'
It read as epitaph above the grave Of human hopes, all blighted as the space Around, whose wreck no hand was stretched to save; Yet that with tender melancholy grace, A sermon in that blooming desert gave To him whose soul had power enough to trace In the lone scene, so desolate, so lone, Though man upbuilds, God shapes the crowning stone.