And, far within those cadent pauses,
The chorus of the ancient Causes!
Delights the dreadful Destiny
To fling his voice into the tree,
And shock thy weak ear with a note
Breathed from the everlasting throat.
In music he repeats the pang
Whence the fair flock of Nature sprang.
O mortal! thy ears are stones;
These echoes are laden with tones
Which only the pure can hear;

Thou canst not catch what they recite

Of Fate and Will, of Want and Right,
Of man to come, of human life,

Of Death and Fortune, Growth and Strife.'

Ralph Waldo Emerson.

THE TREE'S WAY

The high trees are honest folk;
They do not stand so much aloof
Up under heaven's roof,
Altho they are earth's fairest cloak.
Their lives are very calm and slow;
They wait for coming things to come,

They wait, they rest, they ponder some
Purpose forgotten long ago

Like quiet folk;

And sometimes I am moved to stroke
Hand-greeting as I pass them near,

And often I am sure I hear

An answer from these stately folk!

THE TREES

There's something in a noble tree-
What shall I say? a soul?

George Cronyn

For 't is not form, nor aught we see
In leaf, or branch, or bole.
Some presence, though not understood,
Dwells there alway, and seems

To be acquainted with our mood,

And mingles in our dreams.

I would not say that trees at all
Were of our blood and race,
Yet, lingering where their shadows fall,
I sometimes think I trace

A kinship, whose far-reaching root
Grew when the world began,

And made them best of all things mute
To be the friends of man.

Held down by whatsoever might

Unto an earthly sod,

They stretch forth arms for air and light, As we do after God;

And when in all their boughs the breeze
Moans loud, or softly sings,

As our own hearts in us, the trees
Are almost human things.

What wonder in the days that burned
With old poetic dream,

Dead Phaethon's fair sisters turned

To poplars by the stream!

In many a light cotillion stept

The trees when fluters blew;

And many a tear, 't is said, they wept
For human sorrow, too.

Mute, said I? They are seldom thus;

They whisper each to each,

And each and all of them to us,

In varied forms of speech.

"Be serious," the solemn pine Is saying overhead;

"Be beautiful," the elm-tree fine

Has always finely said;

"Be quick to feel," the aspen still
Repeats the whole day long;

While, from the green slope of the hill,
The oak-tree adds, "Be strong."

When with my burden, as I hear
Their distant voices call,

I rise, and listen, and draw near,
"Be patient," say they all.

Samuel Valentine Cole.

THE TREES OF THE GARDEN

Ye who have passed Death's haggard hills; and ye
Whom trees that knew your sires shall cease to know
And still stand silent:-is it all a show,-

A wisp that laughs upon the wall?-decree
Of some inexorable supremacy

Which ever, as man strains his blind surmise
From depth to ominous depth, looks past his eyes,
Sphinx-faced with unabashèd augury?

Nay, rather question the Earth's self. Invoke

The storm-felled forest-trees moss-grown to-day
Whose roots are hillocks where the children play;

Or ask the silver sapling 'neath what yoke

Those stars, his spray-crown's clustering gems, shall wage
Their journey still when his boughs shrink with age.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti,

AMONG THE PINES

The earnest pines are of the sober North.

Cold twilights find them sombre as themselves,
And the gold sun that down the red West delves
Like broken-lancéd knights doth set them forth.

There is among them only Autumn cheer,

A mournful sweetness-yet they do not change,
And their laced limbs are never bare and strange
Under the swift reprisals of the year.

If constancy brings melancholy joy,

This, then, is why these forests reach my heart
With their deep changeless tones, why tears do start
To-night when I behold their brave deploy.

Their constancy brings feelings linked to those

The soul brought here, and keeps beyond life's close.

Arthur Upson.

THE FOUNTS OF SONG

"What is the song I am singing?"— Answered the pine-tree to the wave: "Do you not know the song

You have sung so long

Down in the dim green alleys of the sea,

And where the great blind tides go swinging

Mysteriously,

And where the countless herds of the billows are hurl'd

On all the wild and lonely beaches of the world?"

"Ah, Pine-Tree," sighed the wave,

"I have no song but what I catch from thee:

Far off I hear thy strain

Of infinite sweet pain

That floats along the lovely phantom land.

I sigh, and murmur it o'er and o'er and o'er,

When 'neath the slow compelling hand

That guides me back and far from the loved shore,
I wander long

Where never falls the breath of any song,

But only the loud, empty, crashing roar

Of seas swung this way and that for evermore."

"What is the song I am singing?"

Answered the poet to the pine:

"Do you not know the song

You have sung so long

Here in the dim green alleys of the woods
Where the wild winds go wandering in all moods,

And whisper often o'er and o'er,

Or in tempestuous roar

Their dark eternal secret evermore?"

"O Poet," said the Pine,

"Thine

Is that song!

Not mine!

I have known it, loved it, long!

Nothing I know of what the wild winds cry

Through dusk and storm and night,

Or prophesy

When tempests whirl us with their awful night.
Only, I know that when

The poet's voice is heard

Among the woods

The infinite pain from out the hearts of men

Is sweeter than the voice of wave or branch or bird

In these dumb solitudes.”

Fiona Macleod.

THE WOOD GOD

I heard his step upon the moss;

I glimpsed his shadow in the stream; And once I saw the brambles toss

Wherein he vanished like a dream.

A gaunt beech aimed a vicious stroke
Straight at my face, in wild alarm:
And then a chestnut and an oak
Struck at my head a frantic arm.

The brambles clutched at me; and fear
For one mad instant held me fast-
Just long enough to let me hear

His wind-like footsteps rustle past.

The brushwood made itself more dense,
And looped my feet with green delay;
And threatening me with violence,

The rocks and thorns opposed my way.

But still I followed: forward strained;
In spite of all the wood devised
To keep me back on him I gained-
The deity I had surprised.

The Genius of the wood, whose flute
Had led me far, at first, to see
The imprint of his form and foot
Upon the moss beneath the tree.