ARBOR DA V MANUAL. 
247 
A FOREST SCENE. 
I KNOW a forest vast and old, 
A shade so rich, so darkly green, 
That morning sends her shaft of gold 
In vain to pierce its leafy screen ; 
I know a brake where sleeps the fawn, 
The soft-eyed fawn, through noon's^ repose; 
For noon with all the calm of dawn 
Lies hush’d beneath those dewy boughs. 
Oh, proudly then the forest kings 
Their banners lift o’er vale and mount; 
And cool and fresh the wild grass springs, 
By lonely path, by sylvan fount; 
There, o’er the fair leaf-laden rill, 
The laurel sheds her cluster’d bloom, 
And throned upon the rock-wreathed hill 
The rowan waves his scarlet plume. 
Edith May. 
The forest trees are transient things and frail; 
(So the book told me, ere I closed the page); 
Last year the willow leaves were wan and pale ; 
I'll make to their last place a pilgrimage, 
And changed, dead trees shall read a lesson sage 
Of change and death. No paler than before 
I found the willow leaves, nor sign of age 
Within the woods ; immortal green they wore, 
And the strong, mighty roots the giant trunks upbore. 
Sarah S. Jacobs, The Changeless World. 
’Tis merry in greenwood, thus runs the old lay. 
In the gladsome month of lively May, 
When the wild bird's song on stem and spray 
Invites to forest bower; 
Then rears the ash his airy crest 
Then shines the birch in silver vest, 
And the beech in glistening leaves is drest, 
And dark between shows the oak’s proud breast, 
Like a chieftain's frowning tower. 
Sir Walter Scott, Harold the Dauntless. 
