Old Orchard

Far back as men remember, these old trees
Have stood here, bearing year after brief year
Their small distorted fruits; in the dark breeze
Rides the ripe smell of apples, and a fear
That comes on people when they visit here.
A mossy rot hangs over this still place,
A smell of years; and now and then the face
Of an old prehistoric kind will peer
(So people say) through these dark twisted limbs,
And foreign tongues will whisper with the stream,
Murmuring like the water; an estranging
Dim, other-worldly air of ripeness swims
In the whole dell; there lives here like a dream
Something eternal, ageless, never-changing.