The aegis & intelligencer. [volume] (Bel Air, Md.) 1864-1923, 1869-08-06

SOUND OF TREES.
by HENRY WARD DEECHER,


The sounds and motions of trees consti-
tute subtle but important elements of
pleasure. 1t is not enough that tree shall
have comely form as a whole-that it
cast dense shade in the sultrv DAYS of
summer, and that perhaps it yield nut or
trult-and finally that, when it gives I'D
its life to the inevitable axe, Its prostrate
trunk shall furnish good timber. Besides
these uses OF bodily comfort and economy,
tree, like rich hearted person, has
hundred nameless ways which we hardly
stop to analyze, but which, fthey were
suddenly taken away, we should miss.
The murmuring of trees is profoundly
affecting to sensitive spirit. In some
moods OF imagination, one cannot help
feeling that trees have a low song, or con-
yersation of leaves. They whisper, or
speak, or cry out, and even roar. No one
knows this last quality so well as these
who have been in old oak forests in a
storm, with violent wind. A dense forest
opposes such resistance to the free pass
age of-the air, that the sound is much dead
ened. But In a park or oak opening
where spaces are left for the motion of the
air, and among open branched trees, a
storm moves with such power and maies-
ty, that not even the battles of thunder
clouds are more sublime, and under certain
circumstances it becomes terrific. At the
beginning ofthe tempest, the trees sway and
toss as If seeking to escape as the violence
increases, the branches bounce back, the
leaves, turning their white undersides to
the light, fairly scream. The huge boughs
creak and strain like ship in q storm.
Now and then some branches which
have grown across each other, are drawn
back and forth, as ifdemons were scraping
internal base-viols. Occasionally branch
breaks with wild crash, or some infrm
tree, caught unawares in a huge puff of
the storm, goes down with crashing as it
falls, and with a thunder stroke when
it reaches the ground. Iwould go further
to hear storm concert in an old forest,
than any music that man ever made. No
one who is familiar with forest sounds
but is sure, when he hears Beethoven's mu-
sic, that much of it was inspired by the
sounds of winds among trees.
There are milder joys, however, In tree
converse Only this morning | awakened
to hear it rain. That steady plash of drops
which northeast wind brings on, is not
easily mistaken. flatter myself that nv
ear is too well trained to all the ordinary
sounds of nature to be easily deceived I
rise, and throw back the blinds, when 10 !
not drop is falling 1t is the wind in
my maple trees. | had thought of that,
and listened with the most discriminating
attention, and was sure that it was rain
| Twice in our lives we lived in houses
built on the edge of the original forest
These had been thinned out, and recesses
opened up, 1t happened in both cases
that an ash and hickory had been left
which shot up, without side branches, to
great height. The trunks were supple and
tough. Whenever the wind moved gently,
these long and 1.-THE trees moved with
singular grace and beauty. As there was
no perceptible wind along the ground their
movements seemed voluntary. And yet
there was in it that kind of irrcsolutiou
which one sees In sleep walking. But as
wide circles through which these rooted
gymnasts moved was wonderful. They
seemed going forth in every direction, and
yet surely and quickly springing back to
position again. And in every motion,
such was their elasticity, they manifested
the utmost grace. The signing of winds
in a pine forest has no parallel sound ex-
oept upon the sea-shore. OF all sounds of
leaves it is the sweetest and saddcst, to
certain moods of summer leisure.
The pine sings, like the poet, with no
everyday voice, but in tone apart from
all common sounds. 1t has the power to
change the associations, and to quicken
the poetic sensibility, as no other singing
tree can do. Every one should have this
old harper, like seer ora priest among
trees, about his dwelling. Under an old
pine would naturally be found the young
maiden, whose new lover was far across
the seas. In the sounds that would de-
scend she could not fail to hear the voices
OF the seattle roar of winds, the plash of
waves running in upon the shore. A young
mother, whose first born had returned to