And hung their flowers and berries in the sun;
As the breeze taught, they danced, they sung, they twined
Their sprays in bowers, or spread the ground with net-work.
Through the slow lapse of undivided time,
Silently rising from their buried germs,
Trees lifted to the skies their stately heads,
Tufted with verdure, like depending plumage,
O'er stems unknotted, waving to the wind:
Of these in graceful form, and simple beauty,
The fruitful cocoa and the fragrant palm
Excell'd the wilding daughters of the wood,
That stretch'd unwieldy their enormous arms,
Clad with luxuriant foliage, from the trunk,
Like the old eagle, feather'd to the heel;
While every fibre, from the lowest root
To the last leaf upon the topmost twig,
Was held by common sympathy, diffusing
Through all the complex frame unconscious life.
Such was the locust with its hydra boughs,
A hundred heads on one stupendous trunk;
And such the mangrove, which, at full-moon flood,
Appear'd itself a wood upon the waters,
But when the tide left bare its upright roots,
A wood on piles suspended in the air;
Such too the Indian fig, that built itself
Into a sylvan temple, arch'd aloof
With airy aisles and living colonnades,
Where nations might have worshipp'd God in peace.
From year to year their fruits ungather'd fell;
Not lost, but quickening where they lay, they struck