V

TREES

THE MARSHES OF GLYNN*

BY SIDNEY LANIER

GLOOMS of the live-oaks, beautiful-braided and woven With intricate shades of the vines that myriad-cloven Clamber the forks of the multiform boughsEmerald twilights

Virginal shy lights,

Wrought of the leaves to allure to the whisper of vows, When lovers pace timidly down through the green colonnades

Of the dim sweet woods, of the dear dark woods, Of the heavenly woods and glades,

That run to the radiant marginal sand-beach within The wide sea-marshes of Glynn;

Beautiful glooms, soft dusks in the noonday fireWildwood privacies, closets of lone desire, Chamber from Chamber parted with wavering arras of leaves

Cells for the passionate pleasure of prayer to the soul that grieves,

Pure with a sense of the passing of saints through the wood,

* From "The Poems of Sidney Lanier." Copyright 1884, 1891, by Mary D. Lanier; published by Charles Scribner's Sons.

Cool for the dutiful weighing of ill with good;

O braided dusks of the oak and woven shades of the

vine,

While the riotous noonday sun of the June-day long did shine

Ye held me fast in your heart and I held you fast in

mine;

But now when the noon is no more, and riot

is rest,

And the sun is a-wait at the ponderous gate of the

West,

And the slant yellow beam down the wood-aisle doth seem

Like a lane into heaven that leads from a dream, Ay, now, when my soul all day hath drunken the soul of the oak,

And

my heart is at ease from men, and the wearisome sound of the stroke

Of the scythe of time and the trowel of trade is low, And belief overmasters doubt, and I know that I know,

And my spirit is grown to a lordly great compass within,

That the length and the breadth and the sweep of the Marshes of Glynn

Will work me no fear like the fear they have wrought me of yore

When length was fatigue, and when breadth was but bitterness sore,

And when terror and shrinking and dreary, unnam

able pain

Drew over me out of the merciless miles of the plain,

Oh, now, unafraid, I am fain to face

The vast sweet visage of space.

To the edge of the wood I am drawn, I am drawn, Where the gray beach glimmering runs, as a belt of the dawn,

For a mete and a mark

To the forest dark:

So:

Affable live-oak, leaning low,

Thus with your favor― soft, with a reverent hand (Not lightly touching your person, lord of the land!)

Bending your beauty aside, with a step I stand
On the firm-packed sand,

Free

By a world of marsh that borders a world of sea.

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TALKS ON TREES*

BY OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

From The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table

DON'T you want to hear me talk trees a little now? That is one of my specialties.

* By permission of Houghton, Mifflin & Co,