the olden time?

The olden time is dead and gone;
Its years have fill'd their sum--
And e'en in Greece--her native Greece--
The Sylvan Nymph is dumb--
From ash, and beech, and aged oak,
No classic whispers come,

From Poplar, Pine, and drooping Birch,
And fragrant Linden Trees;
No living sound
E'er hovers round,
Unless the vagrant breeze,
The music of the merry bird,
Or hum of busy bees.

But busy bees forsake the Elm
That bears no bloom aloft--
The Finch was in the hawthorn-bush,
The Blackbird in the croft;
And among the firs the brooding Dove,
That else might murmur soft.

Yet still I heard that solemn sound,
And sad it was to boot,
From ev'ry overhanging bough,
And each minuter shoot;
From rugged trunk and mossy rind,
And from the twisted root.

From these,--a melancholy moan;
From those,--a dreary sigh;
As if the boughs were wintry bare,
And wild winds sweeping by--
Whereas the smallest fleecy cloud
Was steadfast in the sky.

No sign or touch of stirring air
Could either sense observe--
The zephyr had not breath enough
The thistle-down to swerve,
Or force the filmy gossamers
To take another curve.

In still and silent slumber hush'd
All Nature seem'd to be:
From heaven above, or earth beneath,
No whisper came to me--
Except the solemn sound and sad
From that MYSTERIOUS TREE!

A hollow, hollow, hollow, sound,
As is that dreamy roar
When distant billows boil and bound
Along a shingly shore--
But the ocean brim was far aloof,
A hundred miles or more.

No murmur of the gusty sea,
No tumult of the beach,
However they may foam and fret,
The bounded sense could reach--
Methought the trees in mystic tongue
Were talking each to each!--

Mayhap, rehearsing ancient tales
Of greenwood love or guilt,
Of whisper'd vows
Beneath their boughs;
Or blood obscurely spilt,
Or of that near-hand Mansion House
A royal Tudor built.

Perchance, of booty won or shared
Beneath the starry cope--
Or where the suicidal wretch
Hung up the fatal rope;
Or Beauty kept an evil tryste,
Insnared by Love and Hope.

Of graves, perchance, untimely scoop'd
At midnight dark and dank--
And what is underneath the sod
Whereon the grass is rank--
Of old intrigues,
And privy leagues,
Tradition leaves in blank.

Of traitor lips that mutter'd plots--
Of Kin who fought and fell--
God knows the undiscovered schemes,