FOREST TREES 117 



10 And forth they pass, with pleasure forward led, 

 Joying to hear the birds' sweet harmony, 

 Which, therein shrouded from the tempest dread, 

 Seemed in their song to scorn the cruel sky. 

 Much can they praise the trees so straight and high, 

 The sailing pine, the cedar proud and tall, 

 The vine-prop elm, the poplar never dry, 

 The builder oak sole king of forests all, 

 The aspen good for staves, the cypress funeral, 



The laurel meed of mighty conquerors 

 20 And poets sage, the fir that weepeth still, 

 The willow worn of forlorn paramours, 

 The yew obedient to the bender's will, 

 The birch for shafts, the sallow for the mill, 

 The myrrh sweet-bleeding in the bitter wound, 

 The warlike beech, the ash for nothing ill, 

 The fruitful olive, and the platane round, 

 The carver holm, the maple seldom inward sound. 



Led with delight they thus beguile the way 

 Until the blustering storm is overblown, &c. 



The Fairy Queen, I. i. 7-10, 

 (spelling modernized). 



NOTES 



[This part of the poem was written just about two centuries 

 later than Chaucer's Parliament of Fowls. The first three Books 

 of the Fairy Queen were published together in 1590. The 

 measure is a development of Chaucer's eight-lined stanza (seen 

 in the Monk's Tale) by the addition of an English (iambic) 

 hexameter : metrical formula, 8 (5 xa) -f 6 xa ; rime, ab ab be 

 bcc.] 



