The Blasted Tree

“I mark’d the broad and blasted oak,

Scorch’d by the lightning’s livid glare;

Hollow its stem from branch to root,

And all its shrivell’d arms were bare.”

It was a piercing night in mid-winter, and along the rounded hills towards the Clifton meadows, below Aylesbury, the moonlight sparkled on the bright and thickly-crusted snows with peculiar splendour. Far off, the faint but perpetual roar of the icy river was heard, and the dark forests beyond it were dimly seen in the distance, like a heavy cloud in the western horizon. The intermediate country presented only a few solitary trees, and, save that here and there a rugged group of overgrown shrubbery was seen above the snow, one wide and vast uncultivated waste appeared. It was a night in which the fancy of an honest German could not fail to conjure up a thousand phantoms; his shrieking ghosts cried from the crevices of every sapless tree; his witches rode on the pale moonlight moonbeams, in the distant and scarcely perceptible mist that spread a thin veil over the beautiful stars; and the wandering spirits of his departed friends peeped like premature resurrectionists from behind every thicket.

The hour of eleven had drawn nigh, and the watchful family that inhabited the crazy cabin on the borders of this barren country, had extinguished their blazing pine lights, buried up their fires, and sprinkled over the smoking ashes the spoonful of salt, the magic virtues of which dispersed the ghostly train, and ensured them a peaceful rest; when two travellers passed along the broken road that leads from the village towards the ford above the falls. One bore the appearance of an old man, infirm with age; his broad-brimmed hat hid his face, but some thin grey locks waved around his shoulders, and he leaned forward on his jaded horse like one suffering with… Read More