The Tree Is My Seat That Once Lent Me A Shade

More news of the tree stumps of Little Bowden. 

This newly created stump is in the churchyard of the abandoned St Mary-in-Arden.

The anonymous tree-surgeon-cum-artist has thoughtfully fashioned a rather comfortable seat from the remains of the tree –

providing an excellent vantage point to sit and contemplate the abandoned church –

and muse on the changes wrought by time and the vanity of human wishes.

Perhaps our woodman has been reading William Cowper?

 

The Poplar-Field 

The poplars are felled, farewell to the shade
And the whispering sound of the cool colonnade:
The winds play no longer and sing in the leaves,
Nor Ouse on his bosom their image receives.

Twelve years have elapsed since I first took a view
Of my favourite field, and the bank  where they grew,
And now in the grass behold they are laid,
And the tree is my seat that once lent me a shade.

The blackbird has fled to another retreat
Where the hazels afford him a screen from the heat;
And the scene where his melody charmed me before
Resounds with his sweet-flowing ditty no more.

My fugitive years are all hasting away,
And I must ere long lie as lowly as they,
With a turf on my breast and a stone at my head,
Ere another such grove shall arise in its stead.

‘Tis a sight to engage me, if anything can,
To muse on the perishing pleasures of man;
Short-lived as we are, our enjoyments, I see,
Have a still shorter date, and die sooner than we.