Read "The Tree: an Old Man's Story" by Thomas Hardy online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
I. Its roots are bristling in the air / Like some mad Earth-god's spiny hair; / The loud south-wester's swell and yell / Smote it at midnight, and it fell. / Thus ends the tree / Where Some One sat with me.
II. Its boughs, which none but darers trod, / A child may step on from the sod, / And twigs that earliest met the dawn / Are lit the last upon the lawn. / Cart off the tree / Beneath whose trunk sat we!