LINES ON A FOSSIL TREE. 89 



I died ! but long I stood, a hollow bole 

 In which died leaves and reptiles ; but anon 

 I sunk, I sunk, and turned without to coal, 

 Within to stone : I deemed my semblance gone. 



Deeper and deeper ! there I lay entombed 

 How long were useless, being of to day, 

 To tell thee : but these a3ons long were doomed 

 At their appointed hour to pass away. 



Oceans have lashed above my buried frame, 

 Strata been spread, and towering cliffs upreared, 

 Monsters of varied kind and form and name 

 Successive all have been and disappeared. 



I rise I rise ! denuding waters rush 

 Some twenty fathoms only o'er my head ; 

 Listen ! was that a glacier's grinding crush, 

 Or iceberg showering from its melting bed ? 



Since then, a score millennia only, Sir ; 

 Now tramped the mammoth, but I could not hear; 

 No light can pierce, no force my burden stir 

 Ah ! what a shock ! that blast was surely near. 



All hail, thou being that hast me exhumed ! 

 Take what thou want'st thy iron, and calc, and coal, 

 And clay t'employ those wondrous hands entombed 

 In it I've been full long they're thine, the whole. 



But tell me what those forms, than thee more fair ? 



At sight of them my flinty bosom warms, 



And almost sprout again my ribs so bare, 



* Post-pliocenes'? you joke; ah well, earth still hath charms!" 



