Frostburg mining journal. [volume] (Frostburg, Md.) 1871-1913, 1899-04-08

Milton, too, has his passing references
TO trees, and in the fourth book of
Paradise Lost speaks atfectionately of
Cedar and pine and fir and branching palm,
a sylvan scene, and the ranks ascend
Shade above shade Il woody thcater
OF stainlicst view.
Thomson Seasons" abounds in al
lusions to trees, all of them showing
this poets great love for woodland
scenes and out of door life:
Welcome, yr shadcs We bowery thickets, hail!
Nc lofty pines! Nc venerable oaks!
We ashes wild, rcsounding DER the steepl
Delicious in your shelter to the soull
Cowpcr protests that
No tree in all the grove lnt has its charms,
Though each its hue peculiar,
and Shelley beautifully pictures the
calmncss of the summer woods in his
poem "Thc Recollection:
Now all the tree tops lay asleep
Like green waves on the sea,
As still as in the silent deep
The ocean woods may be
Bnt coming to times quite modern it
is Tennyson and Wordsworth who are
the greatest lovers and shrewdest OBJ
servers of trees. Their poems are inlaid
with loving references to their favOrite
forest growths Indeed, without his
woodlands there would be no Words
worth. The trees We're "the guardians
of his heart
Therefore am | still
lover of the meadows and the woods.
But much as English poets revel in
allusions to and des riptions of trees it il
not until we come to our own Ameri-
can singers, with their new world pas
sion for nature. that we find the most
eloquent cXponentS and lovers of tree
life. Whittier, LOngfellow, Bryant,
Holmes, Whitman and Stoddard all
found the tree most suggestive and
impressive thing, whether it be stripped
of its foliage and laden with snow in
winter or nesting lazily with its in
Vulnerable leaves in summer Every
one knows LongfellOw's opening line
of "Evangeline:
This is the forest primeval
But too few know his beautiful lines:
And nature, the old nurse, took
The child upon her knee,
Saying, "HorC is story book
Thy Father has written for thee
"Come, wander with me-" she said,
'Into regions yet untrud,
And read what is still unread
In the manuscripts of Cod
Whittier says
Give fools their gold and knaves their power {;
Let fortunes bubbles rise and fall:
Who sows field or trains a flower.
Or plants tree Is more than all.
Bryant's stately lines ON the forest
have now endeared themselves to the
heart Of every lover of nature, and are
almost too well known to quote:
The groves were Gods first temples
Ere man learned
To hew the shaft, and lay the architrave
And SurCau the roof above thCm-Cre he framed
The lofty vault to gather and roll back
The round of anthems in the darking wood,
Amidst the cool and silence he knelt down
And offered to the Mightiest solemn thanks
And supplications.
Who can ever see apple trees planted
without calling to mind Bryant y beau
tiful lines upon that subject? In his
Forest Hymn" and in "Thanatopsis'
the very spirit of the woods is em-
balmod. But the one poem of Geonge
Morris, beginning "WOodman, spare
that tree, distant echo, though per-
haps DO intentional plagiarism, of Camp
bells "Spare, woodman, spare the
bcechcn tree" has done more toward
developing due love and veneration
for trees than probably any other single
influence. MARY E. LEONARD.