And time shall waste this apple tree.
Oh, when its aged branches throw
Thin shadows on the ground below,
Shall fraud and force and iron will
Oppress the weak and helpless still?
What shall the tasks of mercy be,
Amid the toils, the strifes, the tears
Of those who live when length of years
Is wasting this apple tree?
"Who planted this old apple tree?"
The children of that distant day
Thus to some aged man shall say;
And, gazing on its mossy stem,
The gray-haired man shall answer them:
"A poet of the land was he,
Born in the rude but good old times;
'Tis said he made some quaint old rhymes
On planting the apple tree."
DEFINITIONS:—Greensward, turf or sod green with grass. Mold, crumbling earth. Lea, a grassy field. Cintra, a town in Portugal noted for its fine climate and its delicious grapes. Line, the equator. Roseate, rose-colored. Verdurous, greenish.
THE APPLE.
BY JOHN BORROUGHS.
The apple is the commonest and yet the most varied and beautiful of fruits. A dish of them is as becoming to the center table in winter as is the vase of flowers in summer—a bouquet of Spitzenbergs and Greenings and Northern Spies.
A rose when it blooms, the apple is a rose when it ripens. It pleases every sense to which it can be addressed,—the touch, the smell, the sight, the taste; and when it falls in the still October days it pleases the ear. It is a call to a banquet,—it is a signal that the feast is ready. The bough would fain hold it, but it can now assert its independence; it can now live a life of its own.
Daily the stem relaxes its hold, till finally it lets go completely, and down comes the painted sphere with a mellow thump to the earth, toward which it has been nodding so long.
It will now take time to meditate and ripen! What delicious thoughts it has there, nestled with its fellows under the fence, turning acid into sugar, and sugar into wine!
How pleasing to the touch. I love to stroke its polished rondure with my hand, to carry it in my pocket on my tramp over the winter hills, or through the early spring woods. You are company, you redcheek Spitz or you salmon-fleshed Greening! I toy with you, press your face to mine, toss you in the air, roll you on the ground, see you shine out where you lie amid the moss and dry leaves and sticks.