Warren sheaf. [volume] (Warren, Marshall County, Minn.) 1880-current, 1899-05-04
Warren. MarhaA hursdaz. noz u 1899 =

" NIS SSS .
POETRY AND TREES.
WHAT THE MASTERS HAVE. WRITTEN
ABOUT THEIR FOREST FRIENDS.
Both Sacred and Profane Poets Have
GlOrihed the W0odlands-ThouEh
Culled From Writings as Ancient
as Homer, as Modern as Holmes.
This world 8 song and legend, thought
and religion, have become so associated
and intertwined with trees and tree life
that we seem to have forgotten the part
which plants play in our lives and our
literature. So indissolubly allied are
trees with the history of our thought
that we have no poet of Importance, sa-
cred or profane, from the time of Homer
down to Holmes, who has not sung Of
the tree and found in it an emotional
inspiration.
The Bible abounds in illusions to
trees of all kinds It's poets would have
been without their most effective meta
phors if they had not known the s.oaks
Of Bashan, the ''cedars of Lebanon
and the willows by the water
courses. ~ Zaccheus climbed sycamore
tree, and the almond tree is mentioned
again and again by the sacred poets,
while the fig tree furnishes basis for
many Scriptural comparison. What
more beautiful promise could be given
Israel than the declaration that Gin
stead Of the thorn shall come up the fir
tree, and instead of the brier shall come
up the myrtle tree3''
It was under the rustling leaves Of
the plane tree, in the now far famed
Academeia Of Athens, that Socrates and
Plato sat with their young Grecian
scholars and discussed the old problems
as to what were truth and beauty and
justice. To the childish Greek fancy
every growing tree had it's living dryad.
1t was a plane tree that Agamemnon
planted at Delphos, and it was plane
tree that so charmed Xerxes with it's
beauty that he wasted one whole day
during his invasion Of Greece, and lost
battle in consequence.
It was Empedocles who said that the
souls of the highest virtue passed into
trees, and the old tale Of Philemon and
Baucis assigned them final home in
trees, as reward for the good deeds
they had done for years. Another beau
tiful legend says the penitent Myrrha
became tree, and the drops which still
fall from the bark {myrrh) are her tears.
An old Maori myth represents heaven
and earth as once Joined in an embrace
so close that their children had no place
to dwell. But Tanemahuta, the father
of trees, pushed them asunder with his
arms.
In the misty twilight of Teutonic
and Celtic civilization trees were an
object of worship, and sacrifices were
made in groves. The oak was sacred to
the Druid, as the pine was to the prim-
itive Scandinavian. In Morse cosmogony
the world tree, Yggdrasil had it's foil
age in the clouds, the stars were it's
fruit and the sea it's bed. From its foot
bubbled the fountain of life, and from
its branches the blessing Of fire was first
brought to man. This tree was appar-
emily an ash, and from it, another leg
end says, Odin created Adam, and
from the elm Eve
Passing from mythology to poetry
proper we find trees endeared in the
affection of all poets. Even in the time
of Spenser they were sung about, and
in ''The Faerie Queene'' we find men
tion made of
The saying Pine; the Cedar proud and tall;
The vine.propp Elme; the Poplar never dry;
The builder Oalke, sole king Of forests all =;
The Aspine good for stoves; the Cypresse
funerall. ~ =.
The Laurell, need of mightie conquerours,
And poets sage; the Fire that weepeth still;
The Willow, worne Of forlorne Paramours;
The Eugh, obedient to the bender's will;
The Birch, for shafts; the sallow for the mill;
The Myrrh sweete-bleeding in the bitter
wound;
The Warlike Beech; the Ash for nothing i'll;
The fruitful Olive; and the Plantane round;
The carver Holme; the Maple seldom inward
sound.
One Of Ben Jonson's poems has the
following reference to the oaks, even
at that early time a favorite with poets:
Not merely growing like tree
In bulk doth make man better be
Or standing long an oak three hundred year,
To fall a log at last, dry, bald and scar.
But it is, of course, in Shakespeare
that we find the greatest lover Of the
tree in Elizabethan times. With his un-
erring grasp Of the finest and most sig
nifcant figures he naturally makes
great use Of the tree in his practical
illustrations. He fully realized how
trees were able to beautify a landscape,
for in ''Titus Andronicus' he speaks of
A barren, detested vale, you see, it Isl;
The trees, though summer, yet forlorn and
lean,
O'ercome with moss and baleful mistletoe.
Such plays as CAS- You Like It' are
made up Of eulogies Of woodland life
and the forest.
Milton, too, has his passing references
to trees, and in the fourth book of