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FALLEN IN THE NIGHT!
- IT dressed itself in green leaves all the summer long,
- Was full of chattering starlings, loud with throstles’ song.
- Children played beneath it, lovers sat and talked,
- Solitary strollers looked up as they walked.
- O, so fresh its branches! and the its old trunk gray
- Was so stately rooted, who forbode decay?
- Even when winds had blown it yellow and almost bare,
- Softly dropped its chestnuts through the misty air;
- Still its few leaves rustled with a faint delight,
- And their tender colors charmed the sense of sight,
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- Filled the soul with beauty, and the heart with peace,
- Like sweet sounds departing—sweetest when they cease.
- Pelting, undermining, loosening, came the rain;
- Through its topmost branches roared the hurricane;
- Oft it strained and shivered till the night wore past;
- But in dusky daylight there the tree stood fast,
- Though its birds had left it, and its leaves were dead,
- And its blossoms faded, and its fruit all shed.
- Ay, and when last sunset came a wanderer by,
- Watched it as aforetime with a musing eye,
- Still it wore its scant robes so pathetic gay,
- Caught the sun’s last glimmer, the new moon’s first ray;
- And majestic, patient, stood amidst its peers
- Waiting for the spring‐times of uncounted years.
- But the worm was busy, and the days were run;
- Of its hundred sunsets this was the last one:
- So in the quiet midnight, with no eye to see,
- None to harm in falling, fell the noble tree!
- Says the early laborer, starting at the sight
- With a sleepy wonder, “Fallen in the night!”
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- Says a schoolboy, leaping in a wild delight
- Over trunk and branches, “Fallen in the night!”
- O thou Tree, thou glory of His hand who made
- Nothing ever vainly, thou hast Him obeyed!
- Lived thy life, and perished when and how He willed;—
- Be all lamentation and all murmurs stilled.
- To our last hour live we—fruitful, brave, upright,
- ’T will be a good ending, “Fallen in the night!”
