roots

Of half the mighty forest, tells no tale

Of all the good it does. Thou hast not left Thyself without a witness, in these shades, Of thy perfections: grandeur, strength and grace

Are here to speak of thee. This mighty oak
By whose immovable stem I stand and seem
Almost annihilated-not a prince

In all that proud Old World beyond the deep
E'er wore his crown as loftily as he
Wears the green coronal of leaves with which
Thy hand has graced him. Nestled at his

root

Is beauty such as blooms not in the glare
Of the broad sun. That delicate forest-flower
With scented breath and look so like a smile
Seems, as it issues from the shapeless mould,
An emanation of the indwelling Life,
A visible token of the upholding Love,
That are the soul of this wide universe.

"My heart is awed within me when I think
Of the great miracle that still goes on
In silence round me-the perpetual work
Of thy creation, finished, yet renewed
For ever.
Written on thy works I read.

The lesson of thy own eternity.
Lo! all grow old and die; but see, again,
How on the faltering footsteps of decay
Youth presses-ever-gay and beautiful
youth-

In all its beautiful forms. These lofty trees
Wave not less proudly than their ancestors
Moulder beneath them. Oh, there is not lost
One of earth's charms: upon her bosom yet,

Upon the tyrant's throne, the sepulchre,
And of the triumphs of his ghastly foe
Makes his own nourishment. For he came
forth

From thine own bosom, and shall have no end.

There have been holy men who hid themselves

Deep in the woody wilderness and gave Their lives to thought and prayer, till they outlived

The generation born with them, nor seemed
Less aged than the hoary trees and rocks
Around them; and there have been holy men
Who deemed it were not well to pass life thus.
But let me often to these solitudes
Retire, and in thy presence reassure
My feeble virtue. Here its enemies,
The passions, at thy plainer footsteps shrink
And tremble and are still. O God, when
thou

Dost scare the world with tempests, set on fire
The heavens with falling thunderbolts, or fill
With all the waters of the firmament

The swift dark whirlwind that uproots the woods

And drowns the villages; when, at thy call,
Uprises the great deep and throws himself
Upon the continent, and overwhelms
Its cities, who forgets not, at the sight
Of these tremendous tokens of thy power,
His pride, and lays his strifes and follies by?
Oh, from these sterner aspects of thy face
Spare me and mine, nor let us need the wrath
Of the mad unchained elements to teach

ROUGET DE LISLE FIRST SINGING "THE MARSELLAISE."