There is a Yew-tree, pride of Lorton Vale, Which to this day stands single, in the midst Of its own darkness, as it stood of yore.

Of vast circumference and gloom profound, This solitary Tree! A living thing Produced too slowly ever to decay; Of form and aspect too magnificent To be destroyed.

Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf, Witch's mummy, maw and gulf Of the ravined salt-sea shark, Root of hemlock digged i' th' dark, Liver of blaspheming Jew, Gall of goat, and slips of yew Slivered in the moon's eclipse, Nose of Turk, and Tartar's lips, Finger of birth-strangled babe Ditch-delivered by a drab Make the gruel thick and slab. Add there to a tiger's chaudron For th' ingredience of our cauldron.

For there no yew nor cypress spread their glom But roses blossom'd each rustic tomb.

Careless, unsocial plant! that loves to dwell 'Midst skulls and coffins, epitaphs and worms: Where light-heel'd ghosts and visionary shades, Beneath the wan, cold Moon (as Fame reports) Embodied, thick, perform their mystic rounds No other merriment, dull tree! is thine.

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting. Not in entire forgetfulness, and not in utter nakedness, but trailing clouds of glory do we come.