Laudator Temporis Acti

William Wordsworth, The Excursion 7.590-631:

I feel at times a motion of despite    590
Towards one, whose bold contrivances and skill,
As you have seen, bear such conspicuous part
In works of havoc; taking from these vales,
One after one, their proudest ornaments.
Full oft his doings leave me to deplore    595
Tall ash-tree, sown by winds, by vapours nursed,
In the dry crannies of the pendent rocks;
Light birch, aloft upon the horizon's edge,
A veil of glory for the ascending moon;
And oak whose roots by noontide dew were damped,    600
And on whose forehead inaccessible
The raven lodged in safety.—Many a ship
Launched into Morecambe-bay, to him hath owed
Her strong knee-timbers, and the mast that bears
The loftiest of her pendants; He, from park    605
Or forest, fetched the enormous axle-tree
That whirls (how slow itself!) ten thousand spindles:
And the vast engine labouring in the mine,
Content with meaner prowess, must have lacked
The trunk and body of its marvellous strength,    610
If his undaunted enterprise had failed
Among the mountain coves. Yon household fir,
A guardian planted to fence off the blast,
But towering high the roof above, as if
Its humble destination were forgot—    615
That sycamore, which annually holds
Within its shade, as in a stately tent
On all sides open to the fanning breeze,
A grave assemblage, seated while they shear
The fleece-encumbered flock—the JOYFUL ELM,    620
Around whose trunk the maidens dance in May—
And the LORD'S OAK — would plead their several rights
In vain, if he were master of their fate;
His sentence to the axe would doom them all.
But, green in age and lusty as he is,    625
And promising to keep his hold on earth
Less, as might seem, in rivalship with men
Than with the forest's more enduring growth,
His own appointed hour will come at last;
And, like the haughty Spoilers of the world,    630
This keen Destroyer, in his turn, must fall.

The oak "on whose forehead inaccessible / the raven lodged in safety" (601-602) brings to mind Gilbert White's raven tree. Cf. also Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Raven: A Christmas Tale, Told by a Schoolboy to his Little Brothers and Sisters:

Underneath a huge oak tree
There was, of swine, a huge company,
That grunted as they crunched the mast:
For that was ripe, and fell full fast.
Then they trotted away, for the wind grew high:    5
One acorn they left, and no more might you spy.
Next came a Raven, that liked not such folly:
He belonged, they did say, to the witch Melancholy!

Blacker was he than blackest jet,
Flew low in the rain, and his feathers not wet.    10
He picked up the acorn and buried it straight
By the side of a river both deep and great.

        Where then did the Raven go?
        He went high and low,
Over hill, over dale, did the black Raven go.    15
        Many autumns, many springs
        Travelled he with wandering wings:
        Many summers, many winters—
        I can't tell half his adventures.

At length he came back, and with him a She,    20
And the acorn was grown to a tall oak tree.
They built them a nest in the topmost bough,
And young ones they had, and were happy enow.
But soon came a woodman in leathern guise,
His brow, like a pent-house, hung over his eyes.    25
He'd an axe in his hand, not a word he spoke,
But with many a hem! and a sturdy stroke,
At length he brought down the poor Raven's own oak.
His young ones were killed; for they could not depart,
And their mother did die of a broken heart.    30

The boughs from the trunk the woodman did sever;
And they floated it down on the course of the river
They sawed it in planks, and its bark they did strip,
And with this tree and others they made a good ship.
The ship, it was launched; but in sight of the land    35
Such a storm there did rise as no ship could withstand.
It bulged on a rock, and the waves rushed in fast:
The old Raven flew round and round, and cawed to the blast.
He heard the last shriek of the perishing souls—
See! see! o'er the topmast the mad water rolls!    40
    Right glad was the Raven, and off he went fleet,
And Death riding home on a cloud he did meet,
And he thank'd him again and again for this treat:
    They had taken his all, and Revenge was sweet!

Coleridge first published the poem anonymously in the Morning Post (March 10, 1798), with a mock attribution to Edmund Spenser. It circulated earlier in manuscript, as Charles Lamb quotes from it in a letter to Coleridge (February 5, 1797).

Labels: arboricide