We are the hosts innumerable who ride
Upon the hills—who stride
The plains and surge upon the mountainside.
We are the onward-sweeping tide
Of ceaseless growth, the countless entities
Of all the rolling, emerald seas
Of timber-land—we are the Trees!
The dam who suckles us is Earth,
She gives us birth
And when
Our night is come, she claims her own again.
We live to grow and to this end
Recurring seasons lend
Their favor; Winter comes, our labors cease,
It is a time of cold, white peace;
When Spring walks jubilantly through the land
We know the hour of increase is at hand;
Then stirs our forest-heart and sap runs free—
The sap which is the life-blood of a tree.
Our skin is bark, and fiber is our flesh
And through the pores of every fresh
Green leaf, we breathe. Our good?
Is to make wood;
To hold in check the floods that devastate;
To mediate
Between the Heavens and the Earth,
That there shall be no dearth
Of water nor excess—yet still enough
Stored in our forest floor of matted duff
To save the land from barrenness,
And when we tender less
Than this, or stop
From making wood, we’re dead! In time, we drop,
And when we drop, we rot.
Such is our lot; our lives are fraught
With much vicissitude, not always free
To shape our destiny—
A tale where each slow-born event
Is moulded by environment.
And there is stuff
Enough of drama if the rough,
Rude story were all told—a stage
Where age-
Old patriarchs make way
For jostling, upstart youth and gay,
Bepainted courtezans and those who weep
With trailing tears; and anchorites who keep
Their solitary trysts; and those who sing;
And gossips bent in whispering;
Defiant wretches of the sod,
Hurling invective at their God;
Or those whose arms in priestly-wise
Turn supplicating to the skies,
Or stoop to bless
With benediction and caress;
And gnarled hags
And misshaped monsters of the crags;
And moon-white hosts
Of beckoning ghosts.
With wild, spendthrift magnificence
The stage is set—immense
And primal. Flash
And flood and thunder-crash,
Devouring flame and scattered dead
And silences that hang like lead.
Stuff
Enough for drama if the rough
Rude story were all told;
A tale as old
As dusk, as new as dawn—
The play is always going on—
The curtain’s never drawn.