'
FOREST-TEACHINGS.
There was travelling in the wild-wood
Once, a child of song;
And he marked the forest-monarchs
As he went along.
Here, the oak, broad-eaved and spreading;
Here, the poplar tall;
Here, the holly, forky-leaved;
Here, the yew, for the bereaved;
Here, the chestnut, with its flowers, and its spine-bestudded ball.
Here, the cedar, palmy-branched;
Here, the hazel low;
Here, the aspen, quivering ever;
Here, the powdered sloe.
Wondrous was their form and fashion,
Passing beautiful to see
How the branches interlaced,
How the leaves each other chased,
Fluttering lightly hither, thither on the wind-aroused tree.
Then he spake to those wood-dwellers:
'Ye are like to men,
And I learn a lesson from ye
With my spirit's ken.
Like to us in low beginning,
Children of the patient earth;
Born, like us, to rise on high,
Ever nearer to the sky,
And, like us, by slow advances from the minute of your birth.
'And, like mortals, ye have uses--
Uses each his own:
Each his gift, and each his beauty,
Not to other known.
Thou, O oak, the strong ship-builder,
For thy country's good,
Givest up thy noble life,
Like a patriot in the strife,
Givest up thy heart of timber, as he poureth out his blood.
'Thou, O poplar, tall and taper,
Reachest up on high;
Like a preacher pointing upward--
Upward to the sky.
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