Читать книгу The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 1, January, 1864 - Various - Страница 20

In the same soil the family of trees

Spring up, and, like a band of brothers, grow

In the same sun, while from their leafy lips

Comes not the faintest whisper of dissent

Because of various girth and grain and hue.

The oak flings not his acorns at the elm;

The white birch shrinks not from the swarthy ash;

The green plume of the pine nods to the shrub;

The loftiest monarch of the realm of wood

Spares not his crown in elemental storms,

But shares the blows with trees of humbler growth,

And stretches forth his arms to save their fall.

Wild flowers festoon the feet of all alike;

Green mosses grow upon the trunks of all;

Sweet birds pour out their songs on every bough;

Clouds drop baptismal showers of rain on each,

And the broad sun floods every leaf with light.

Behold them clad in Autumn's golden pomp—

Their rich magnificence, of different dyes,

More beautiful than royal robes, and crowns

Of emperors on coronation day.

But the deserted nest in silence sways

Like a sad heart beneath a royal scarf;

And the red tint upon the maple leaves

Is colored like the fields where fell our braves

In hurricanes of flame and leaden hail.

I love to gaze up at the grand old trees;

Their branches point like hope to Heaven serene;

Their roots point to the silent world that's dead;

Their grand old trunks hold towns and fleets for us,

And cots and coffins for the race unborn.

When at their feet their predecessors fell,

Spring covered their remains with mourning moss,

And wrote their epitaph in pale wood flowers,

And Summer gave ripe berries to the birds

To stay and sing their sad sweet requiem;

And Autumn rent the garments of the trees

That stood mute mourners in a field of graves,

And Winter wrapped them in a winding sheet.

They seemed like giants sleeping in their shrouds.