The lapse of upward of six
centuries had reduced this once mighty tree to a mere crumbling
fragment, yet, like a gigantic torso in ancient statuary, the grandeur
of the mutilated trunk gave evidence of what it had been in the days of
its glory. In contemplating its mouldering remains, the fancy busied
itself in calling up the scene that must have been presented beneath
its shade, when this sunny hill swarmed with the pageantry of a warlike
and hunting court. When silken pavilions and warrior-tents decked its
crest, and royal standards, and baronial banners, and knightly pennons
rolled out to the breeze. When prelates and courtiers, and steel-clad
chivalry thronged round the person of the monarch, while at a distance
loitered the foresters in green, and all the rural and hunting train
that waited upon his sylvan sports.
'A thousand vassals mustered round
With horse, and hawk, and horn, and hound;
And through the brake the rangers stalk,
And falc'ners hold the ready hawk;
And foresters in green-wood trim
Lead in the leash the greyhound grim."
Such was the phantasmagoria that presented itself for a moment to my
imagination, peopling the silent place before me with empty shadows of
the past.
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