why I have been two years molding Idlewild into a home, and have not yet set out a tree.

I SAW IN LOUISIANA A LIVE-OAK
GROWING*

BY WALT WHITMAN

I SAW in Louisiana a live-oak growing,

All alone stood it and the moss hung down from the branches,

Without any companion it grew there uttering joyous leaves of dark green,

And its look, rude, unbending, lusty, made me think of myself,

But I wonder'd how it could utter joyous leaves standing alone there without its friend near, for I knew I could not,

And I broke off a twig with a certain number of leaves upon it, and twined around it a little

moss,

And brought it away, and I have placed it in sight in my room.

It is not needed to remind me of my own dear friends

(For I believe lately I think of little else than of them),

* From "Poetical Works," published by David McKay, Philadelphia, Pa.

Yet it remains to me a curious token, it makes me think of manly love;

For all that, and though the live-oak glistens there in Louisiana, solitary in a wide, flat space, Uttering joyous leaves all its life without a friend, a lover near,

I know very well I could not.

THE MAPLE*

BY JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

THE Maple puts her corals on in May,
While loitering frosts about the lowlands cling,
To be in tune with what the robins sing,

Plastering new log-huts 'mid her branches gray;
But when the Autumn southward turns away,

Then in her veins burns most the blood of Spring,

And every leaf, intensely blossoming,

Makes the year's sunset pale the set of day.

O Youth unprescient, were it only so

With trees you plant, and in whose shade reclined, Thinking their drifting blooms Fate's coldest

snow,

You carve dear names upon the faithful rind,

Nor in that vernal stem the cross foreknow
That Age shall bear, silent, yet unresigned!

* By permission of the publishers, Houghton, Mifflin & Co.

UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE

BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

UNDER the greenwood tree

Who loves to lie with me,

And tune his merry note

Unto the sweet bird's throat

Come hither, come hither, come hither!
Here shall we see

No enemy

But winter and rough weather.

Who doth ambition shun,

And loves to live i' the sun,
Seeking the food he eats,

And pleased with what he gets-
Come hither, come hither, come hither!
Here shall he see

No enemy

But winter and rough weather.

THE LESSON OF A TREE*

BY WALT WHITMAN

I SHOULD not take either the biggest or the most picturesque tree to illustrate it. Here is one of my favorites now before me, a fine yellow poplar, quite

* From "Prose Works," published by David McKay, Philadelphia, Pa.

straight, perhaps ninety feet high, and four thick at the butt. How strong, vital, enduring! How dumbly eloquent! What suggestions of imperturbability and being, as against the human trait of mere seeming. Then the qualities, almost emotional, palpably artistic, heroic, of a tree; so innocent and harmless, yet so savage. It is, yet says nothing. How it rebukes, by its tough and equable serenity, all weathers, this gusty-tempered little whiffet, man, that runs indoors at a mite of rain. or snow. Science (or rather half-way science) scoffs at reminiscence of dryad and hamadryad, and of trees speaking. But, if they don't, they do as well as most speaking, writing, poetry, sermons or rather they do a great deal better. I should say indeed that those old dryad reminiscences are quite as true as any, and profounder than most reminiscences we get. ("Cut this out," as the quack mediciners say, and keep by you.) Go and sit in a grove or woods, with one or more of those voiceless companions, and read the foregoing and think.

THE BEAUTY OF TREES

BY WILSON FLAGG

IT IS difficult to realize how great a part of all that is cheerful and delightful in the recollections of our own life is associated with trees. They are

allied with the songs of morn, with the quiet of noonday, with social gatherings under the evening sky, and with all the beauty and attractiveness of every season. Nowhere does nature look more lovely, or the sounds from birds and insects, and from inanimate things, affect us more deeply, than in their benevolent shade. Never does the blue sky appear more serene than when its dappled azure glimmers through their green trembling leaves. Their shades, which, in the early ages, were the temples of religion and philosophy, are still the favorite resort of the studious, the scene of healthful sport for the active and adventurous, and the very sanctuary of peaceful seclusion for the contemplative and sorrowful.

THE SNOWING OF THE PINES*

BY THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON

SOFTER than silence, stiller than still air,

Float down from high pine-boughs the slender leaves.
The forest floor its annual boon receives

That comes like snowfall, tireless, tranquil, fair.
Gently they glide, gently they clothe the bare
Old rocks with grace. Their fall a mantle weaves
Of paler yellow than autumnal sheaves
Or those strange blossoms the witch-hazels wear.

* By permission of the publishers, Houghton, Mifflin & Co.