Rotten wood cannot be carved.
Chinese proverb.

For lack of wood the fire goes out, and where there is no whisperer, quarreling ceases. As charcoal is to hot embers and wood to fire, so is a quarrelsome person for kindling strife.
Bible: Proverbs 26:20-21.

Age appears to be best in four things—old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read.
Francis Bacon

The Wood-Pile
By Robert Frost

Out walking in the frozen swamp one grey day
I paused and said, “I will turn back from here.
No, I will go on farther—and we shall see.”
The hard snow held me, save where now and then
One foot went down. The view was all in lines
Straight up and down of tall slim trees
Too much alike to mark or name a place by
So as to say for certain I was here
Or somewhere else: I was just far from home.
A small bird flew before me. He was careful
To put a tree between us when he lighted,
And say no word to tell me who he was
Who was so foolish as to think what he thought.
He thought that I was after him for a feather—
The white one in his tail; like one who takes
Everything said as personal to himself.
One flight out sideways would have undeceived him.
And then there was a pile of wood for which
I forgot him and let his little fear
Carry him off the way I might have gone,
Without so much as wishing him good-night.
He went behind it to make his last stand.
It was a cord of maple, cut and split
And piled—and measured, four by four by eight.
And not another like it could I see.
No runner tracks in this year’s snow looped near it.
And it was older sure than this year’s cutting,
Or even last year’s or the year’s before.
The wood was grey and the bark warping off it
And the pile somewhat sunken. Clematis
Had wound strings round and round it like a bundle.
What held it though on one side was a tree
Still growing, and on one a stake and prop,
These latter about to fall. I thought that only
Someone who lived in turning to fresh tasks
Could so forget his handiwork on which
He spent himself, the labour of his axe,
And leave it there far from a useful fireplace
To warm the frozen swamp as best it could
With the slow smokeless burning of decay.

O Brother Tree
By Max Michelson

O brother tree! O brother tree! Tell to me, thy brother,
The secret of thy life,
The wonder of thy being.
 
My brother tree, my brother tree,
My heart is open to thee—
Reveal me all thy secrets.
 
Beloved tree, beloved tree,
I have shattered all my pride.
I love thee, brother, as myself.
Oh, explain to me thy wonders.
 
Beloved one, adored one,
I will not babble of it among fools—
I will tell it only to the unspoiled:
Reveal to me thy being.
 
I have watched thy leaves in sunshine,
I have heard them in the storm.
My heart drank a droplet of thy holy joy and wonder,
One drop from the ocean of thy wonder.
 
I am thy humble brother—I am thine own.
Reveal thy life to me,
Reveal thy calm joy to me,
Reveal to me thy serene knowledge.

Agamede’s Song
By Arthur Upson

Grow, grow, thou little tree,
His body at the roots of thee;
Since last year’s loveliness in death
The living beauty nourisheth.

Bloom, bloom, thou little tree,
Thy roots around the heart of me;
Thou canst not blow too white and fair
From all the sweetness hidden there.

Die, die, thou little tree,
And be as all sweet things must be;
Deep where thy petals drift I, too,
Would rest the changing seasons through.

O Wind, thou hast thy kingdom in the trees
By Michael Field

O Wind, thou hast thy kingdom in the trees,
     And all thy royalties
Sweep through the land to-day.
     It is mid June,
And thou, with all thine instruments in tune,
     Thine orchestra
Of heaving fields, and heavy, swinging fir,
     Strikest a lay
     That doth rehearse
Her ancient freedom to the universe.
     All other sound in awe
       Repeals its law;
     The bird is mute, the sea
     Sucks up its waves, from rain
     The burthened clouds refrain,
     To listen to thee in thy leafery,
       Thou unconfined,
Lavish, large, soothing, refluent summer-wind!

Leaves
By Michael Field

Where are they? I have never missed before
The whole wide kingdom of the cherishing leaves,
Or waft, or drifted into golden heaves
With all their scents, or dead upon the floor!
We left at sundown; but shall see no more
The air a film of multitudinous leaves;
For, lo, a sudden ravishing bereaves,
The air that threaded them, the earth that bore!
And now of all their gorgeous, solumn realms
No sign: of unseen arrows came their fall;
They are not. Clematis and ivy curl
Their wavering tissues on the river wall—
Nothing afloat: the river a dark pearl;
The jagged acacia and the misted elms.

Pear Tree
By H.D.

Silver dust
lifted from the earth,
higher than my arms reach,
you have mounted.
O silver,
higher than my arms reach
you front us with great mass;

no flower ever opened
so staunch a white leaf,
no flower ever parted silver
from such rare silver;

O white pear,
your flower-tufts,
thick on the branch,
bring summer and ripe fruits
in their purple hearts

A London Plane-Tree
By Amy Levy

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 gray.
 
Others the country take for choice,
  And hold the town in scorn;
But she has listened to the voice
  On city breezes borne.

Over the Wood’s Brow
By Paul Verlaine

Over the wood's brow,
   Pale, the moon stares;
In every bough
   Wandering airs
Faintly suspire. . . .

O heart's-desire!

Two willow-trees
   Waver and weep,
One in the breeze,
   One in the deep
Glass of the stream. . . .

Dream we our dream!

An infinite
   Resignedness
Rains where the white
   Mists opalesce
In the moon-shower. . . .

Stay, perfect hour!

Three Songs of Shattering
By Edna St. Vincent Millay

I

The first rose on my rose-tree
    Budded, bloomed, and shattered,
During sad days when to me
                Nothing mattered.
 
Grief of grief has drained me clean;
    Still it seems a pity
No one saw,—it must have been
                Very pretty.

II

Let the little birds sing;
    Let the little lambs play;
Spring is here; and so ’tis spring;—
    But not in the old way!

I recall a place
    Where a plum-tree grew;
There you lifted up your face,
    And blossoms covered you.

If the little birds sing,
    And the little lambs play,
Spring is here; and so ’tis spring—
    But not in the old way!

III

All the dog-wood blossoms are underneath the tree!
    Ere spring was going—ah, spring is gone!
And there comes no summer to the like of you and me,—
    Blossom time is early, but no fruit sets on.

All the dog-wood blossoms are underneath the tree,
    Browned at the edges, turned in a day;
And I would with all my heart they trimmed a mound for me,
    And weeds were tall on all the paths that led that way!

Hawthorn
By Anonymous Medieval Poet

Of every kind of tree,
Of every kind of tree,
The hawthorn blows the sweetest
Of every kind of tree.

My lover she shall be,
My lover she shall be
Of earthly girls the fairest,
My lover she shall be.

Haiku
By Buson

Fallen willow leaves --
the clear stream gone dry,
stones here and there.

Haiku
By Basho

A whole field of
rice seedlings planted - I part
from the willow.

Squalls shake the Basho
tree - all
night my basin echoes rain.

Won't you come and see
loneliness? Just one leaf
from the kiri tree.

In a Station of the Metro
By Ezra Pound

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.

Woodman, Spare That Tree
By George Pope Morris

Woodman, spare that tree!
  Touch not a single bough!
In youth it sheltered me,
  And I ’ll protect it now.
’T was my forefather’s hand
  That placed it near his cot;
There, woodman, let it stand,
  Thy axe shall harm it not.

That old familiar tree,
  Whose glory and renown
Are spread o’er land and sea—
  And wouldst thou hew it down?
Woodman, forbear thy stroke!
  Cut not its earth-bound ties;
Oh, spare that aged oak
  Now towering to the skies!
 
When but an idle boy,
  I sought its grateful shade;
In all their gushing joy
  Here, too, my sisters played.
My mother kissed me here;
  My father pressed my hand—
Forgive this foolish tear,
  But let that old oak stand.
 
My heart-strings round thee cling,
  Close as thy bark, old friend!
Here shall the wild-bird sing,
  And still thy branches bend.
Old tree! the storm still brave!
  And, woodman, leave the spot;
While I ’ve a hand to save,
  Thy axe shall harm it not.

Song of the Redwood-Tree
By Walt Whitman

A California song!
A prophecy and indirection—a thought impalpable,
            to breathe, as air;
A chorus of dryads, fading, departing—or hamadryads
            departing;
A murmuring, fateful, giant voice, out of the earth and
            sky,
Voice of a mighty dying tree in the Redwood forest
            dense.
  
Farewell, my brethren,
Farewell, O earth and sky—farewell, ye neighboring waters;
My time has ended, my term has come.
  
2

Along the northern coast,
Just back from the rock-bound shore, and the caves,
In the saline air from the sea, in the Mendocino
            country,
With the surge for bass and accompaniment low and
            hoarse,
With crackling blows of axes, sounding musically, driven
            by strong arms,
Riven deep by the sharp tongues of the axes—there in
            the Redwood forest dense,
I heard the mighty tree its death-chant chanting.

The choppers heard not—the camp shanties echoed not;
The quick-ear’d teamsters, and chain and jack-screw men,
            heard not,
As the wood-spirits came from their haunts of a thousand
            years, to join the refrain;
But in my soul I plainly heard.

Murmuring out of its myriad leaves,
Down from its lofty top, rising two hundred feet high
Out of its stalwart trunk and limbs—out of its foot-thick
            bark,
That chant of the seasons and time—chant, not of the
            past only, but the future.
  
3

You untold life of me,
And all you venerable and innocent joys,
Perennial, hardy life of me, with joys, ’mid rain, and many a
            summer sun,
And the white snows, and night, and the wild winds;
O the great patient, rugged joys! my soul’s strong joys,
            unreck’d by man;
(For know I bear the soul befitting me—I too have
            consciousness, identity,
And all the rocks and mountains have—and all the earth;)
Joys of the life befitting me and brothers mine,
Our time, our term has come.

Nor yield we mournfully, majestic brothers,
We who have grandly fill’d our time;
With Nature’s calm content, and tacit, huge delight,
We welcome what we wrought for through the past,
And leave the field for them.

For them predicted long,
For a superber Race—they too to grandly fill their time,
For them we abdicate—in them ourselves, ye forest kings!
In them these skies and airs—these mountain peaks—
            Shasta—Nevadas,
These huge, precipitous cliffs—this amplitude—these valleys
            grand—Yosemite,
To be in them absorb’d, assimilated.
  
4

Then to a loftier strain,
Still prouder, more ecstatic, rose the chant,
As if the heirs, the Deities of the West,
Joining, with master-tongue, bore part.

Not wan from Asia’s fetishes,
Nor red from Europe’s old dynastic slaughter-house,
(Area of murder-plots of thrones, with scent left yet of wars
            and scaffolds every where,)
But come from Nature’s long and harmless throes                         —peacefully builded thence,
These virgin lands—Lands of the Western Shore,    
To the new Culminating Man—to you, the Empire New,
You, promis’d long, we pledge, we dedicate.

You occult, deep volitions,
You average Spiritual Manhood, purpose of all, pois’d on
            yourself—giving, not taking law,
You Womanhood divine, mistress and source of all,
            whence life and love, and aught that comes from
            life and love,
You unseen Moral Essence of all the vast materials
            of America, (age upon age, working in
            Death the same as Life,)
You that, sometimes known, oftener unknown, really
            shape and mould the New World, adjusting it to
            Time and Space,
You hidden National Will, lying in your abysms, conceal’d,
            but ever alert,
You past and present purposes, tenaciously pursued, may-be
            unconscious of yourselves,
Unswerv’d by all the passing errors, perturbations of the
            surface;
You vital, universal, deathless germs, beneath all creeds,
            arts, statutes, literatures,
Here build your homes for good—establish here—These areas
            entire, Lands of the Western Shore,
We pledge, we dedicate to you.

For man of you—your characteristic Race,
Here may be hardy, sweet, gigantic grow—here tower,
            proportionate to Nature,
Here climb the vast, pure spaces, unconfined, uncheck’d by
            wall or roof,
Here laugh with storm or sun—here joy—here patiently
            inure,
Here heed himself, unfold himself (not others’ formulas
            heed) —here fill his time,
To duly fall, to aid, unreck’d at last,
To disappear, to serve.

Thus, on the northern coast,
In the echo of teamsters’ calls, and the clinking chains,
            and the music of choppers’ axes,
The falling trunk and limbs, the crash, the muffled
            shriek, the groan,
Such words combined from the Redwood-tree—
            as of wood-spirits’ voices ecstatic, ancient
            and rustling,
The century-lasting, unseen dryads, singing,
            withdrawing,
All their recesses of forests and mountains leaving,
From the Cascade range to the Wasatch—or
            Idaho far, or Utah,
To the deities of the Modern henceforth yielding,
The chorus and indications, the vistas of coming
            humanity—the settlements, features all,
In the Mendocino woods I caught.
  
5

The flashing and golden pageant of California!
The sudden and gorgeous drama—the sunny
            and ample lands;
The long and varied stretch from Puget Sound
            to Colorado south;
Lands bathed in sweeter, rarer, healthier air—
            valleys and mountain cliffs;
The fields of Nature long prepared and fallow—
            the silent, cyclic chemistry;
The slow and steady ages plodding—the unoccupied
            surface ripening—the rich ores forming
            beneath;
At last the New arriving, assuming, taking possession,
A swarming and busy race settling and organizing
            every where;
Ships coming in from the whole round world,
            and going out to the whole world,
To India and China and Australia, and the thousand
            island paradises of the Pacific;
Populous cities—the latest inventions—the steamers
            on the rivers—the railroads—with many a
            thrifty farm, with machinery,
And wool, and wheat, and the grape—and diggings
            of yellow gold.
  
6

But more in you than these, Lands of the Western
            Shore!
(These but the means, the implements, the
            standing-ground,)
I see in you, certain to come, the promise of
            thousands of years, till now deferr’d,
Promis’d, to be fulfill’d, our common kind,
            the Race.

The New Society at last, proportionate to Nature,
In Man of you, more than your mountain peaks,
            or stalwart trees imperial,
In Woman more, far more, than all your gold,
            or vines, or even vital air.

Fresh come, to a New World indeed, yet long
            prepared,
I see the Genius of the Modern, child of the Real
            and Ideal,
Clearing the ground for broad humanity, the
            true America, heir of the past so grand,
To build a grander future.

In a Wood
By Thomas Hardy

Pale beech and pine-tree blue,
  Set in one clay,
Bough to bough cannot you
  Bide out your day?
When the rains skim and skip,
Why mar sweet comradeship,
Blighting with poison-drip
  Neighborly spray?

Heart-halt and spirit-lame,
  City-opprest,
Unto this wood I came
  As to a nest;
Dreaming that sylvan peace
Offered the harrowed ease—
Nature a soft release
  From men’s unrest.

But, having entered in,
  Great growths and small
Show them to men akin—
  Combatants all!
Sycamore shoulders oak,
Bines the slim sapling yoke,
Ivy-spun halters choke
  Elms stout and tall.

Touches from ash, O wych,
  Sting you like scorn!
You, too, brave hollies, twitch
  Sidelong from thorn.
Even the rank poplars bear
Illy a rival’s air,
Cankering in black despair
  If overborne.

Since, then, no grace I find
  Taught me of trees,
Turn I back to my kind,
  Worthy as these.
There at least smiles abound,
There discourse trills around,
There, now and then, are found
  Life-loyalties.

The Haunted Tree
By William Wordsworth

To-----

THOSE silver clouds collected round the sun
His mid-day warmth abate not, seeming less
To overshade than multiply his beams
By soft reflection--grateful to the sky,
To rocks, fields, woods. Nor doth our human sense
Ask, for its pleasure, screen or canopy
More ample than the time-dismantled Oak
Spreads o'er this tuft of heath, which now, attired
In the whole fulness of its bloom, affords
Couch beautiful as e'er for earthly use
Was fashioned; whether, by the hand of Art,
That eastern Sultan, amid flowers enwrought
On silken tissue, might diffuse his limbs
In languor; or, by Nature, for repose
Of panting Wood-nymph, wearied with the chase.
O Lady! fairer in thy Poet's sight
Than fairest spiritual creature of the groves,
Approach;--and, thus invited, crown with rest
The noon-tide hour: though truly some there are
Whose footsteps superstitiously avoid
This venerable Tree; for, when the wind
Blows keenly, it sends forth a creaking sound
(Above the general roar of woods and crags)
Distinctly heard from far--a doleful note!
As if (so Grecian shepherds would have deemed)
The Hamadryad, pent within, bewailed
Some bitter wrong. Nor is it unbelieved,
By ruder fancy, that a troubled ghost
Haunts the old trunk; lamenting deeds of which
The flowery ground is conscious. But no wind
Sweeps now along this elevated ridge;
Not even a zephyr stirs;--the obnoxious Tree
Is mute; and, in his silence, would look down,
O lovely Wanderer of the trackless hills,
On thy reclining form with more delight
Than his coevals in the sheltered vale
Seem to participate, the while they view
Their own far-stretching arms and leafy heads
Vividly pictured in some glassy pool,
That, for a brief space, checks the hurrying stream!

The Green Linnet
By William Wordsworth

BENEATH these fruit-tree boughs that shed
Their snow-white blossoms on my head,
With brightest sunshine round me spread
  Of Spring's unclouded weather,
In this sequester'd nook how sweet
To sit upon my orchard-seat,
And flowers and birds once more to greet,
  My last year's friends together!
  
One have I mark'd, the happiest guest
In all this covert of the blest:—
Hail to thee, far above the rest
  In joy of voice and pinion!
Thou, Linnet! in thy green array
Presiding spirit here to-day
Dost lead the revels of the May;
  And this is thy dominion.
  
While birds, and butterflies, and flowers,
Make all one band of paramours,
Thou, ranging up and down the bowers,
  Art sole in thy employment;
A life, a presence like the air,
Scattering thy gladness without care,
Too blest with any one to pair,
  Thyself thy own enjoyment.
  
Amid yon tuft of hazel trees
That twinkle to the gusty breeze,
Behold him perch'd in ecstasies
  Yet seeming still to hover;—
There! where the flutter of his wings
Upon his back and body flings
Shadows and sunny glimmerings,
  That cover him all over.
  
My dazzled sight he oft deceives—
A brother of the dancing leaves;
Then flits, and from the cottage-eaves
  Pours forth his song in gushes;
As if by that exulting strain
He mock'd and treated with disdain
The voiceless form he chose to feign,
While fluttering in the bushes.


The Planting of the Apple Tree
By William Cullen Bryant

  COME, let us plant the apple-tree.
Cleave the tough greensward with the spade;
Wide let its hollow bed be made;
There gently lay the roots, and there
Sift the dark mould with kindly care,
  And press it o'er them tenderly,
As, round the sleeping infant's feet,
We softly fold the cradle sheet;
  So plant we the apple-tree.
  
What plant we in this apple-tree?
Buds, which the breath of summer days
Shall lengthen into leafy sprays;
Boughs where the thrush, with crimson breast,
Shall haunt and sing and hide her nest;
  We plant, upon the sunny lea,
A shadow for the noontide hour,
A shelter from the summer shower,
  When we plant the apple-tree.
  
  What plant we in this apple-tree?
Sweets for a hundred flowery springs
To load the May-wind's restless wings,
When, from the orchard row, he pours
Its fragrance through our open doors;
  A world of blossoms for the bee,
Flowers for the sick girl's silent room,
For the glad infant sprigs of bloom,
  We plant with the apple-tree.
  
  What plant we in this apple-tree!
Fruits that shall swell in sunny June,
And redden in the August noon,
And drop, when gentle airs come by,
That fan the blue September sky,
  While children come, with cries of glee,
And seek them where the fragrant grass
Betrays their bed to those who pass,
  At the foot of the apple-tree.

  And when, above this apple-tree,
The winter stars are quivering bright,
And winds go howling through the night,
Girls, whose young eyes o'erflow with mirth,
Shall peel its fruit by cottage-hearth,
  And guests in prouder homes shall see,
Heaped with the grape of Cintra's vine
And golden orange of the line,
  The fruit of the apple-tree.
  
  The fruitage of this apple-tree
Winds and our flag of stripe and star
Shall bear to coasts that lie afar,
Where men shall wonder at the view,
And ask in what fair groves they grew;
  And sojourners beyond the sea
Shall think of childhood's careless day
And long, long hours of summer play,
  In the shade of the apple-tree.
  
  Each year shall give this apple-tree
A broader flush of roseate bloom,
A deeper maze of verdurous gloom,
And loosen, when the frost-clouds lower,
The crisp brown leaves in thicker shower;
  The years shall come and pass, but we
Shall hear no longer, where we lie,
The summer's songs, the autumn's sigh,
  In the boughs of the apple-tree.
  
  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 little 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;
'T is said he made some quaint old rhymes
  On planting the apple-tree."

Our Casuarina Tree
By Toru Dutt

LIKE a huge Python, winding round and round
  The rugged trunk, indented deep with scars,
  Up to its very summit near the stars,
A creeper climbs, in whose embraces bound
  No other tree could live. But gallantly
The giant wears the scarf, and flowers are hung
In crimson clusters all the boughs among,
  Whereon all day are gathered bird and bee;
And oft at nights the garden overflows
With one sweet song that seems to have no close,
Sung darkling from our tree, while men repose.

When first my casement is wide open thrown
  At dawn, my eyes delighted on it rest;
  Sometimes, and most in winter,—on its crest
A gray baboon sits statue-like alone
  Watching the sunrise; while on lower boughs
His puny offspring leap about and play;
And far and near kokilas hail the day;
  And to their pastures wend our sleepy cows;
And in the shadow, on the broad tank cast
By that hoar tree, so beautiful and vast,
The water-lilies spring, like snow enmassed.

But not because of its magnificence
  Dear is the Casuarina to my soul:
  Beneath it we have played; though years may roll,
O sweet companions, loved with love intense,
  For your sakes, shall the tree be ever dear.
Blent with your images, it shall arise
In memory, till the hot tears blind mine eyes!
  What is that dirge-like murmur that I hear
Like the sea breaking on a shingle-beach?
It is the tree’s lament, an eerie speech,
That haply to the unknown land may reach.

Unknown, yet well-known to the eye of faith!
  Ah, I have heard that wail far, far away
  In distant lands, by many a sheltered bay,
When slumbered in his cave the water-wraith
  And the waves gently kissed the classic shore
Of France or Italy, beneath the moon,
When earth lay trancèd in a dreamless swoon:
  And every time the music rose,—before
Mine inner vision rose a form sublime,
Thy form, O Tree, as in my happy prime
I saw thee, in my own loved native clime.

Therefore I fain would consecrate a lay
  Unto thy honor, Tree, beloved of those
  Who now in blessed sleep for aye repose,—
Dearer than life to me, alas, were they!
  Mayst thou be numbered when my days are done
With deathless trees—like those in Borrowdale,
Under whose awful branches lingered pale
  “Fear, trembling Hope, and Death, the skeleton,
And Time the shadow;” and though weak the verse
That would thy beauty fain, oh, fain rehearse,
May Love defend thee from Oblivion’s curse.

The Lady of the Trees
By Mary E. Coleridge

By a lake below the mountain
   Hangs the birch, as if, in glee
The lake had flung the moon a fountain,
   She had turned it to a tree.

Therefore do her dull leaves glimmer
   Like the waves that mothered them.
Therefore flits a moony shimmer
   Always round her curvèd stem.

The Trees Are Down
By Charlotte Mew

—and he cried with a loud voice:
Hurt not the earth, neither the sea, nor the trees—
                                   Revelation

They are cutting down the great plane-trees at the end of
            the gardens.
   For days there has been the grate of the saw, the swish
             of the branches as they fall,
The crash of trunks, the rustle of trodden leaves,
With the “Whoops” and the “Whoas,” the loud common talk,
             the loud common laughs of the
   men above it all.

I remember one evening of a long past Spring.
Turning in at a gate, getting out of a cart, and finding a large
             dead rat in the mud of the drive.
I remember thinking: alive or dead, a rat was a god-forsaken
             thing.
But at least, in May, that even a rat should be alive.

The week’s work here is as good as done. There is just on
            bough
   On the roped bole, in the fine grey rain,
            Green and high
            And lonely against the sky.
                        (Down now! —)
            And but for that,
            If an old dead rat
Did once, for a moment, unmake the Spring, I might never
            have thought of him again.

It is not for a moment the Spring is unmade to-day;
These were great trees, it was in them from root to stem:
When the men with the “Whoops” and the “Whoas”
            have carted the whole of the
   whispering loveliness away
Half the Spring, for me, will have gone with them.

It is going now, and my heart has been struck with the
            hearts of the planes;
Half my life it has beat with these, in the sun, in the rains,
            In the March wind, the May breeze,
In the great gales that came over to them across the roofs
            from the great seas.
            There was only a quiet rain when they were dying;
            They must have heard the sparrows flying,
And the small creeping creatures in the earth where they
            were lying—
            But I, all day, I heard an angel crying:
                        “Hurt not the trees.”

Wild Grapes
By Robert Frost

WHAT tree may not the fig be gathered from?
The grape may not be gathered from the birch?
It’s all you know the grape, or know the birch.
As a girl gathered from the birch myself
Equally with my weight in grapes, one autumn,

I ought to know what tree the grape is fruit of.
I was born, I suppose, like anyone,
And grew to be a little boyish girl
My brother could not always leave at home.
But that beginning was wiped out in fear

The day I swung suspended with the grapes,
And was come after like Eurydice
And brought down safely from the upper regions;
And the life I live now’s an extra life
I can waste as I please on whom I please.

So if you see me celebrate two birthdays,
And give myself out of two different ages,
One of them five years younger than I look—
One day my brother led me to a glade
Where a white birch he knew of stood alone,

Wearing a thin head-dress of pointed leaves,
And heavy on her heavy hair behind,
Against her neck, an ornament of grapes.
Grapes, I knew grapes from having seen them last year.
One bunch of them, and there began to be

Bunches all round me growing in white birches,
The way they grew round Leif the Lucky’s German;
Mostly as much beyond my lifted hands, though,
As the moon used to seem when I was younger,
And only freely to be had for climbing.

My brother did the climbing; and at first
Threw me down grapes to miss and scatter
And have to hunt for in sweet fern and hardhack;
Which gave him some time to himself to eat,
But not so much, perhaps, as a boy needed.

So then, to make me wholly self-supporting,
He climbed still higher and bent the tree to earth
And put it in my hands to pick my own grapes.
“Here, take a tree-top, I’ll get down another.
Hold on with all your might when I let go.”

I said I had the tree. It wasn’t true.
The opposite was true. The tree had me.
The minute it was left with me alone
It caught me up as if I were the fish
And it the fishpole. So I was translated

To loud cries from my brother of “Let go!
Don’t you know anything, you girl? Let go!”
But I, with something of the baby grip
Acquired ancestrally in just such trees
When wilder mothers than our wildest now

Hung babies out on branches by the hands
To dry or wash or tan, I don’t know which,
(You’ll have to ask an evolutionist)—
I held on uncomplainingly for life.
My brother tried to make me laugh to help me.

“What are you doing up there in those grapes?
Don’t be afraid. A few of them won’t hurt you.
I mean, they won’t pick you if you don’t them.”
Much danger of my picking anything!
By that time I was pretty well reduced

To a philosophy of hang-and-let-hang.
“Now you know how it feels,” my brother said,
“To be a bunch of fox-grapes, as they call them,
That when it thinks it has escaped the fox
By growing where it shouldn’t—on a birch,

Where a fox wouldn’t think to look for it—
And if he looked and found it, couldn’t reach it—
Just then come you and I to gather it.
Only you have the advantage of the grapes
In one way: you have one more stem to cling by,

And promise more resistance to the picker.”
One by one I lost off my hat and shoes,
And still I clung. I let my head fall back,
And shut my eyes against the sun, my ears
Against my brother’s nonsense; “Drop,” he said,

“I’ll catch you in my arms. It isn’t far.”
(Stated in lengths of him it might not be.)
“Drop or I’ll shake the tree and shake you down.”
Grim silence on my part as I sank lower,
My small wrists stretching till they showed the banjo strings.

“Why, if she isn’t serious about it!
Hold tight awhile till I think what to do.
I’ll bend the tree down and let you down by it.”
I don’t know much about the letting down;
But once I felt ground with my stocking feet

And the world came revolving back to me,
I know I looked long at my curled-up fingers,
Before I straightened them and brushed the bark off.
My brother said: “Don’t you weigh anything?
Try to weigh something next time, so you won’t

Be run off with by birch trees into space.”
It wasn’t my not weighing anything
So much as my not knowing anything—
My brother had been nearer right before.
I had not taken the first step in knowledge;

I had not learned to let go with the hands,
As still I have not learned to with the heart,
And have no wish to with the heart—nor need,
That I can see. The mind—is not the heart.
I may yet live, as I know others live,

To wish in vain to let go with the mind—
Of cares, at night, to sleep; but nothing tells me
That I need learn to let go with the heart.

Birches
By Robert Frost
 
WHEN I see birches bend to left and right
Across the line of straighter darker trees,
I like to think some boy's been swinging them.
But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay.  
Ice-storms do that. Often you must have seen them
Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning
After a rain. They click upon themselves
As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored
As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.
Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal shells
Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust—
Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away
You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.
They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,
And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed
So low for long, they never right themselves:
You may see their trunks arching in the woods
Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground
Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair
Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.
But I was going to say when Truth broke in
With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm
(Now am I free to be poetical?)
I should prefer to have some boy bend them
As he went out and in to fetch the cows—
Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,
Whose only play was what he found himself,
Summer or winter, and could play alone.
One by one he subdued his father's trees
By riding them down over and over again
Until he took the stiffness out of them,
And not one but hung limp, not one was left
For him to conquer. He learned all there was
To learn about not launching out too soon
And so not carrying the tree away
Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise
To the top branches, climbing carefully
With the same pains you use to fill a cup
Up to the brim, and even above the brim.
Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,
Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.

So was I once myself a swinger of birches;
And so I dream of going back to be.
It's when I'm weary of considerations,
And life is too much like a pathless wood
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
From a twig's having lashed across it open.
I'd like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate wilfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth's the right place for love:
I don't know where it's likely to go better.
I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

Trees
By Joyce Kilmer

(For Mrs. Henry Mills Alden)

I think that I shall never see
A poem as 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.

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