I love to view these things with curious eyes,

And moralize:

And in this wisdom of the Holly Tree

Can emblems see

Wherewith perchance to make a pleasant rhyme,
One which may profit in the aftertime.

Thus, though abroad perchance I might appear
Harsh and austere,

To those who on my leisure would intrude,

Reserved and rude,

Gentle at home amid my friends I'd be

Like the high leaves upon the Holly Tree.

And should my youth, as youth is apt, I know,
Some harshness show,

All vain asperities I day by day

Would wear away,

Till the smooth temper of my age should be
Like the high leaves upon the Holly Tree.

And as when all the summer trees are seen
So bright and green,

The holly leaves a sober hue display

Less bright than they,

But when the bare and wintry woods we see,
What then so cheerful as the Holly Tree?

So serious should my youth appear among
The thoughtless throng,

So would I seem among the young and gay

More grave than they,

That in my age as cheerful I might be
As the green winter of the Holly Tree.

Robert Southey.

THE MAPLE-TREE

Day after day I travel down
From Billerica to the town;
Day after day, in passing by
A cedar-pasture, gray and high,
See, shining clear and far, (a mile),
The white church-steeple of Carlisle;
And bright between Carlisle and me,
Daily a glowing maple-tree.
Suffused with yellow, every part
Is burning saffron at the heart.
Upwards and warm the colors gain
From ruddy gold to claret-stain;
And downward tending, lightly lean
To citron yellow and cold green.
Day after autumn day it still
More deeply burns against the hill.
And now I've made of it a type

Of hopes, like mine, near autumn-ripe,
And watch intent, which first shall be,
The consummation of the tree,

Or that gold harvest-hope prepared for me.

AUTUMN MAPLES

Philip Henry Savage.

The thoughts of all the maples who shall name,
When the sad landscape turns to cold and gray?
Yet some for very ruth and sheer dismay,
Hearing the northwind pipe the winter's name,
Have fired the hills with beaconing clouds of flame;
And some with softer woe that day by day,
So sweet and brief, should go the westward way,
Have yearned upon the sunset with such shame
That all their cheeks have turned to tremulous rose;
Others for wrath have turned a rusty red,
And some that knew not either grief or dread,
Ere the old year should find its iron close,
Have gathered down the sun's last smiles acold,
Deep, deep, into their luminous hearts of gold.

Archibald Lampman.

I SAW IN LOUISIANA A LIVE-OAK GROWING

I saw in Louisiana a live-oak growing,

All alone stood it and the moss hung down from the branches, Without any companion it grew there uttering joyous leaves of dark green,

And its look, rude, unbending, lusty, made me think of myself, But I wonder'd how it could utter joyous leaves standing alone there without its friend near, for I knew I could not, And I broke off a twig with a certain number of leaves upon it, and twined around it a little moss,

And brought it away, and I have placed it in sight in my room; It is not needed to remind me as of my own dear friends,

(For I believe lately I think of little else than of them,)

Yet it remains to me a curious token, it makes me think of manly love;

For all that, and though the live-oak glistens there in Louisiana solitary in a wide flat space,

Uttering joyous leaves all its life without a friend a lover near, I know very well I could not.

THE MOUNTAIN OAK

Walt Whitman.

The ideal of the mountain oak may be anything, twisting, and leaning, and shattered, and rock-encumbered, so only that, amidst all its misfortunes, it maintain the dignity of oak; and, indeed, I look upon this kind of a tree as more ideal than the other, in so far as, by its efforts and struggles, more of its nature, enduring power, patience in waiting for and ingenuity in obtaining what it wants, is brought out, and so more of the essence of oak exhibited than under more fortunate conditions.

Ruskin.

THE OLIVE TREE

I do not want painters to tell me any scientific facts about olive trees. But it had been well for them to have felt and seen the olive tree; to have loved it for Christ's sake, partly also for the helmed Wisdom's sake which was to the heathen in some sort as that nobler Wisdom which stood at God's right hand, when he founded the earth and established the heavens. To have loved

it even to the hoary dimness of its delicate foliage, subdued and faint of hue, as if the ashes of the Gethsemane agony had been cast upon it forever, and to have traced, line for line, the gnarled writhings of its intricate branches, and the pointed fretwork of its light and narrow leaves, inlaid on the blue field of the sky, and the small rosy-white stars of its spring blossoming, and the beads of sable fruit scattered by autumn along its topmost boughs the right, in Israel, of the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow,-and, more than all, the softness of the mantle, silver gray, and tender like the down on a bird's breast, with which, far away, it veils the undulation of the mountains; these it had been well for them to have seen and drawn, whatever they had left unstudied in the gallery. Ruskin.

SPRUCE TREES

"In proportion to its weight when dry, Douglass spruce timber is perhaps stronger than that of any other large conifer in the country, and being tough, durable, and elastic, it is admirably suited for ship-building, piles, and heavy timber in general.

When lumbering is going on in the best Douglass woods, especially about Puget Sound, many of the long, slender boles are saved for spars; and so superior is their quality that they are called for in almost every shipyard in the world, and it is interesting to follow their fortunes. Felled and peeled and dragged to tide-water, they are raised again as yards and masts for ships, given iron roots and canvas foliage, decorated with flags, and sent to sea, where in glad motion they go cheerily over the ocean prairie in every latitude and longitude, singing and blowing responsive to the same winds that waved them when they were in the woods.

After standing in one place for centuries they thus go round the world like tourists, meeting many a friend from the old-home forest; some traveling like themselves, some standing head downward in muddy harbors, holding up the platforms of wharves, and others doing all kinds of hard timber work, showy or hidden."

John Muir.

THE PEAR TREE IN BLOSSOM

It glistens in bridal brightness,
Bedecked with gems of the sun;
With golden promise of fruitage
Blossom and bough are spun.

It pales in the air of the evening,
Weighted with revery,
Veiling itself as a maiden

With bridal modesty.

Then, deep in the darkness enfolded,

It dreams of a distant frost,

The bridegroom beneath whose caresses
Its beauty forever is lost.

A LONDON PLANE-TREE

Green is the plane-tree in the square,
The other trees are brown;

They droop and pine for country air;
The plane-tree loves the town.

Here from my garret-pane, I mark
The plane-tree bud and blow,

Shed her recuperative bark,

And spread her shade below.

Among her branches, in and out,
The city breezes play;

The dun fog wraps her round about;
Above, the smoke curls grey.

Others the country take for choice,
And hold the town in scorn;

But she has listened to the voice

On city breezes borne.

Alice Wilson.

Amy Levy.