Canzler—The oak's red blood must nourish olive leaves.
They would remake the world Val-father made
And take the seasons from his great right hand.
We must be like them or be not at all.
Like them in manhood, Hartzel?
Fritz— No; in Faith.
And even their gods know not the Saxon tongue.
Rudolph—If a man speak Val-father's name, he dies.
Max—And we must die if we be not baptized.
Fritz—Must even ask of them what we may eat!
Canzler—Why is it not enough to be a man?
To do a man's work and to live a life
Free like the wild deer, and to grow like these?
(He looks about upon the trees.)
You, Hartzel, have lived longer than we have
And you have seen more seasons, and you know
In father Woden's forests how the trees
Grow as they will, acknowledging no lord
But him who made them to be lordless, and
Obeying no law save that law that bids
Each be itself and bring forth its own fruit.
In all the populous forests of this world
There is no tyrant tree that lifts its head
Above the rest and says, "Obey my law."
For each tree hath its own law in itself,
And no tree hears another, but each hears
The voice of father Woden in the loam
Laying the law of selfhood on each seed.
The seed bursts and the law starts toward the sky.
The acorn lays it softly on the oak,
The chestnut on the chestnut, and the pine
Upon the loftiest mountain hears its cone
Whispering with father Woden in the air,
Learning the law it taketh to the ground.
Thus by that law that each tree be itself,
This forest hath become a stalwart state,
A nation governed by one law, a vast
Green kingdom of ten thousand happy trees
With father Woden monarch in the boughs.
The law of selfhood is the law of trees;
Who says the law of sameness governs man?
Because the South has not the girth of trunk
To bear Val-father's weight upon its boughs,
Must he climb down from ours and let the South
Climb up and with its law bind leaf and limb?
Did he, who made these oaks to grow and spread
Their branches, make our branching minds to be
Pinched to a point and put inside a ring?
Hartzel—But they say that they got that ring from some
God that once came down—
Canzler— From their southern skies?
Who gave the southern cypress mouth to speak
Val-father's law unto the northern pine?
God, do you say, come down to bind men? God?
A God that binds? (Looking up at the trees.)
I see no ring on these.