Shall those mild things of bulk and multitude, Yield of their huge, unutterable selves. But at the word Of the ancient, sacerdotal Night, Night of the many secrets, whose effect- In each the uncouth, individual soul Essential, and, their bodily presences Algernon Blackwood. THE TREE O fair and forest tree Where shall your great hands be, Or rest in air? And shall you hold the stain Of sunlight or of rain When I walk down the wood And find you there? And shall the moonlight soft Or shall the thunder crash, Harold Bullard. THE SOUL OF A TREE Our sense of fellowship with the trees is in part instinctive. It may have remained in the blood from the time that our ancestors lived and worshipped in the groves, nay, worshipped the trees themselves. A sense of fellowship with the trees may be deep in our nature; dormant only, it is but too likely, in those who are closely confined in our overgrown towns and cities; ready to awake again if the companionship of trees should happily be granted them again. I have been enough among the trees, and have planned and worked enough among them, to have come to know them intimately, to grieve if one must go, almost to grieve if, for the good of a tree, a branch must come out, to give the new wood a chance; or to let another tree, that is being injured by a more strongly growing neighbour, have more room; and my heart sinks whenever I think that some day I may have to leave these humble friends of mine to the care or the neglect of others. Here, though I have called them humble, they seem, in more than their height, to rise above me. By their silent endurance, by their mere length of years, by their naturalness, they soothe and strengthen. Though the tree has not a soul, it is to me as if it had. Individual trees have their own character. We may say simply that this is an oak, that a beech, and that an elm; as we distinguish Englishman, Frenchman and German. But the tree lover goes further than this; as we do also with our fellows when we know them intimately. Not every oak has just the same appearance of rugged strength. Not every silver birch is just as graceful as every other. Like us, too, they are creatures of habit; and their habits become fixed; from which quality of theirs many a moral lesson has been drawn for the benefit of human saplings. Have we not also fruitful trees and unfruitful trees; the latter, however, being fruitful, at least, in homilies? Also do not the trees aid each other and injure each other? Are not some of them social in their habit and others markedly individualistic? And when the trees live together in companies, must not each part with something of its liberty as the price of social companionship? J. Ernest Phythian. THE GARDEN When we have run our passion's heat, A. Marvell. TREES Trees are indeed the glory, the beauty, and the delight of nature. In what one imaginable attribute, that it ought to possess, is a tree, pray, deficient? Light, shade, shelter, coolness, freshness, music, all the colours of the rainbow, dew and dreams dropping through their umbrageous twilight at eve or morn,-dropping direct, soft, sweet, soothing, and restorative, from heaven. Without trees, how in the name of wonder could we have had houses, ships, bridges, easy-chairs, or coffins, or almost any single one of the necessaries, conveniences, or comforts of life? Without trees, one man might have been born with a silver spoon in his mouth, but not another with a wooden ladle. Tree by itself Tree, "such tents the patriarchs loved, "-Ipsenemus, "the brotherhood of Trees," the Grove, the Coppice, the Wood, the Forest,-dearly, and after a different fashion, do we love you all!—And love you all we shall, while our dim eyes can catch the glimmer, our dull ears the murmur, of the leaves, or our imagination hear at midnight, the far-off swing of old branches groaning in the tempest. Oh! is not Merry also Sylvan England? And has not Scotland, too, her old pine forests, blackening up her Highland mountains? Are not many of her rivered valleys not unadorned with woods,-her braes beautiful with their birken shaws? And does not stately ash or sycamore tower above the kirk-spire in many a quiet glen, overshadowing the humble house of God, "the dial-stone aged and green," and all the deep-sunk, sinking, or upright array of grave-stones, beneath which "The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep"? John Wilson. "DRAW CLOSER, O YE TREES" O quiet cottage room, Whose casements, looking o'er the garden-close, Sweet is thy light subdued, Gracious and soft, lingering upon my book, As that which shimmers through the branched wood Above some dreamful nook! Leaning within my chair, Through the thin curtain I can see the stir- Sway the dark-layered fir; And, in the beechen green, Mark many a squirrel romp and chirrup loud; Through loopholes in the leaves, Upon the yellow slopes of far-off farms, At times I note, near by, The flicker tapping on some hollow bole; Or, when the day is done, And the warm splendors make the oak-top flush, O sanctuary shade Enfold me round! I would no longer roam : |