Edith M. Thomas is the author of the lines below, found in the
_Canadian Presbyterian_:
The apple-tree said,
“You think I’m dead,”
“Because I have never a leaf to show,
Because I stoop,
And my branches droop,
And the dull, gray mosses over me grow;
But I’m alive in trunk and shoot,
The buds of next May
I fold away,
But I pity the withered grass at my root.”
“You think I’m dead,”
The quick grass said,
“Because I have parted with stem and blade,
But under the ground
I’m safe and sound,
With the snow’s thick blanket over me laid.
I’m all alive and ready to shoot
Should the spring of the year
Come dancing here,
But I pity the flower without branch or root.”
“You think I’m dead,”
A soft voice said,
“Because not a branch or root I own.
I never have died
But close I hide
In a plump seed that the wind has sown,
Patient I wait through the long winter hours.
You will see me again,
I shall laugh at you then
Out of the eyes of a hundred flowers.”
(1809)