UNDERNEATH THE BOUGH
MIRACLE
Yesterday the twig was brown and bare;
To-day the glint of green is there
To-morrow will be leaflets spare;
I know no thing so wondrous fair
No miracle so strangely rare.
I wonder what will next be there!
L. H. Bailey
THE AWAKENING
You little, eager, peeping thing—
You embryonic point of light
Pushing from out your winter night,
How you do make my pulses sing!
A tiny eye amid the gloom—
The merest speck I scarce had seen—
So doth God's rapture rend the tomb
In this wee burst of April green!
And lo, 'tis here—and lo! 'Tis there—
Spurting its jets of sweet desire
In upward curling threads of fire
Like tapers kindling all the air.
Why, scarce it seems an hour ago
These branches clashed in bitter cold;
What Power hath set their veins aglow?
O soul of mine, be bold, be bold!
If from this tree, this blackened thing,
Hard as the floor my feet have prest,
This flame of joy comes clamoring
In hues as red as robin's breast
Waking to life this little twig—
O faith of mine, be big! Be big!
Angela Morgan
SHADE
The kindliest thing God ever made,
His hand of very healing laid
Upon a fevered world, is shade.
His glorious company of trees
Throw out their mantles, and on these
The dust-stained wanderer finds ease.
Green temples, closed against the beat
Of noontime's blinding glare and heat,
Open to any pilgrim's feet.
The white road blisters in the sun;
Now, half the weary journey done,
Enter and rest, Oh, weary one!
And feel the dew of dawn still wet
Beneath thy feet, and so forget
The burning highway's ache and fret.
This is God's hospitality,
And whoso rests beneath a tree
Hath cause to thank Him gratefully.
Theodosia Garrison
SELECTION FROM "UNDER THE TREES"
The wonderful, strong, angelic trees,
With their blowing locks and their bared great knees
And nourishing bosoms, shout all together,
And rush and rock through the glad wild weather.
They are so old they teach me,
With their strong hands they reach me,
Into their breast my soul they take,
And keep me there for wisdom's sake.
They teach me little prayers;
To-day I am their child;
The sweet breath of their innocent airs
Blows through me strange and wild.
I never feel afraid
Among the trees;
Of trees are houses made;
And even with these,
Unhewn, untouched, unseen,
Is something homelike in the safe sweet green,
Intimate in the shade.
We are all brothers! Come, let's rest awhile
In the great kinship. Underneath the trees
Let's be at home once more, with birds and bees
And gnats and soil and stone. With these I must
Acknowledge family ties. Our mother, the dust,
With wistful and investigating eyes
Searches my soul for the old sturdiness,
Valor, simplicity! Stout virtues these,
We learned at her dear knees.
Friend, you and I
Once played together in the good old days.
Do you remember? Why, brother, down what wild ways
We traveled, when—
That's right! Draw close to me!
Come now, let's tell the tale beneath the old roof-tree.
Anna Hempstead Branch
A GARDEN FRIEND
O comrade tree, perhaps alive as I—
One process lacking of this mortal clay—
Give me your constant outlook to the sky,
The courtesy and cheer that fill your day.
Your noble gift of perfect service teach;
Your wisdom in the wild storm softly bent
Aware 'twill end; your patience that can reach
Across the years from clod to firmament.
Catherine Markham (Mrs. Edwin Markham)
A LADY OF THE SNOWS
The mountain hemlock droops her lacy branches
Oh, so tenderly
In the summer sun!
Yet she has power to baffle avalanches—
She, rising slenderly
Where the rivers run.
So pliant yet so powerful! Oh, see her
Spread alluringly
Her thin sea-green dress!
Now from white winter's thrall the sun would free her
To bloom unenduringly
In his glad caress.
Harriet Monroe
THE TREE
Spread, delicate roots of my tree,
Feeling, clasping, thrusting, growing;
Sensitive pilgrim root tips roaming everywhere.
Into resistant earth your filaments forcing,
Down in the dark, unknown, desirous:
The strange ceaseless life of you, eating and drinking of earth,
The corrosive secretions of you, breaking the stuff of the world to your will.
Tips of my tree in the springtime bursting to terrible beauty,
Folded green life, exquisite, holy exultant;
I feel in you the splendour, the autumn of ripe fulfilment,
Love and labour and death, the sacred pageant of life.
In the sweet curled buds of you,
In the opening glory of leaves, tissues moulded of green light;
Veined, cut, perfect to type,
Each one like a child of high lineage bearing the sigil of race.
The open hands of my tree held out to the touch of the air
As love that opens its arms and waits on the lover's will;
The curtsey, the sway, and the toss of the spray as it sports with the breeze;
Rhythmical whisper of leaves that murmur and move in the light;
Crying of wind in the boughs, the beautiful music of pain:
Thus do you sing and say
The sorrow, the effort, the sweet surrender, the joy.
Come! tented leaves of my tree;
High summer is here, the moment of passionate life,
The hushed, the maternal hour.
Deep in the shaded green your mystery shielding,
Heir of the ancient woods and parent of forests to be,
Lo! to your keeping is given the Father's life-giving thought;
The thing that is dream and deed and carries the gift of the past.
For this, for this, great tree,
The glory of maiden leaves, the solemn stretch of the bough,
The wise persistent roots
Into the stuff of the world their filaments forcing,
Breaking the earth to their need.
Tall tree, your name is peace.
You are the channel of God:
His mystical sap,
Elixir of infinite love, syrup of infinite power,
Swelling and shaping, brooding and hiding,
With out-thrust of delicate joy, with pitiless pageant of death,
Sings in your cells;
Its rhythmical cycle of life
In you is fulfilled.
Evelyn Underhill
"LOVELIEST OF TREES"
Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.
Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.
And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.
A. E. Housman
THE SPIRIT OF THE BIRCH
I am the dancer of the wood
I shimmer in the solitude
Men call me Birch Tree, yet I know
In other days it was not so.
I am a Dryad slim and white
Who danced too long one summer night,
And the Dawn found and prisoned me!
Captive I moaned my liberty.
But let the wood wind flutes begin
Their elfin music, faint and thin,
I sway, I bend, retreat, advance,
And evermore—I dance! I dance!
Arthur Ketchum
FAMILY TREES
You boast about your ancient line,
But listen, stranger, unto mine:
You trace your lineage afar,
Back to the heroes of a war
Fought that a country might be free;
Yea, farther—to a stormy sea
Where winter's angry billows tossed,
O'er which your Pilgrim Fathers crossed.
Nay, more—through yellow, dusty tomes
You trace your name to English homes
Before the distant, unknown West
Lay open to a world's behest;
Yea, back to days of those Crusades
When Turk and Christian crossed their blades,
You point with pride to ancient names,
To powdered sires and painted dames;
You boast of this—your family tree;
Now listen, stranger, unto me:
When armored knights and gallant squires,
Your own belovèd, honored sires,
Were in their infants' blankets rolled,
My fathers' youngest sons were old;
When they broke forth in infant tears
My fathers' heads were crowned with years,
Yea, ere the mighty Saxon host
Of which you sing had touched the coast,
Looked back as far as you look now.
Yea, when the Druids trod the wood,
My venerable fathers stood
And gazed through misty centuries
As far as even Memory sees.
When Britain's eldest first beheld
The light, my fathers then were eld.
You of the splendid ancestry,
Who boast about your family tree,
Consider, stranger, this of mine—
Bethink the lineage of a Pine.
Douglas Malloch
IDEALISTS
Brother Tree:
Why do you reach and reach?
Do you dream some day to touch the sky?
Brother Stream:
Why do you run and run?
Do you dream some day to fill the sea?
Brother Bird:
Why do you sing and sing?
Do you dream—
Young Man:
Why do you talk and talk and talk?
Alfred Kreymborg
"DRAW CLOSER, O YE TREES"
O quiet cottage room,
Whose casements, looking o'er the garden-close,
Are hid in wildings and the woodbine bloom
And many a clambering rose,
Sweet is thy light subdued,
Gracious and soft, lingering upon my book,
As that which shimmers through the branchèd wood
Above some dreamful nook!
Leaning within my chair,
Through the curtain I can see the stir—
The gentle undulations of the air—
Sway the dark-layered fir;
And, in the beechen green,
Mark many a squirrel romp and chirrup loud;
While far beyond, the chestnut-boughs between,
Floats the white summer cloud.
Through the loopholes in the leaves,
Upon the yellow slopes of far-off farms,
I see the rhythmic cradlers and the sheaves
Gleam in the binders' arms.
At times I note, nearby,
The flicker tapping on some hollow bole;
And watch the sun, against the sky,
The fluting oriole;
Or, when the day is done,
And the warm splendors make the oak-top flush,
Hear him, full-throated in the setting sun,—
The darling wildwood thrush.
O sanctuary shade
Enfold one round! I would no longer roam:
Let not the thought of wandering e'er invade
This still, reclusive home!
Draw closer, O ye trees!
Veil from my sight e'en the loved mountain's blue;
The world may be more fair beyond all these,
Yet I would know but you!
Lloyd Mifflin
TREES
In the Garden of Eden, planted by God,
There were goodly trees in the springing sod,—
Trees of beauty and height and grace,
To stand in splendor before His face.
Apple and hickory, ash and pear,
Oak and beech and the tulip rare,
The trembling aspen, the noble pine,
The sweeping elm by the river line;
Trees for the birds to build and sing,
And the lilac tree for a joy in spring;
Trees to turn at the frosty call
And carpet the ground for their Lord's footfall;
Trees for fruitage and fire and shade,
Trees for the cunning builder's trade;
Wood for the bow, the spear, and the flail,
The keel and the mast of the daring sail;
He made them of every grain and girth,
For the use of man in the Garden of Earth.
Then lest the soul should not lift her eyes
From the gift to the Giver of Paradise,
On the crown of a hill, for all to see,
God planted a scarlet maple tree.
Bliss Carman
THE TREES
There's something in a noble tree—
What shall I say? a soul?
For 'tis not form, or 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 Phaëthon's fair sisters turned
To poplars by the stream!
In many a light cotillion stept
The trees when fluters blew;
And many a tear, 'tis 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 POPLARS
My poplars are like ladies trim,
Each conscious of her own estate;
In costume somewhat over prim,
In manner cordially sedate,
Like two old neighbours met to chat
Beside my garden gate.
My stately old aristocrats—
I fancy still their talk must be
Of rose-conserves and Persian cats,
And lavender and Indian tea;—
I wonder sometimes as I pass
If they approve of me.
I give them greeting night and morn,
I like to think they answer, too,
With that benign assurance born
When youth gives age the reverence due,
And bend their wise heads as I go
As courteous ladies do.
Long may you stand before my door,
Oh, kindly neighbours garbed in green,
And bend with rustling welcome o'er
The many friends who pass between;
And where the little children play
Look down with gracious mien.
Theodosia Garrison
TREES
I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth's sweet flowing breast;
A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A tree that may in Summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;
Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.
Joyce Kilmer