NEW ENGLAND WOODS by AMOS RUSSEL WELLS

New England woods are fair of face,
And warm with tender, homely grace,
Not vast with tropic mystery,
Nor scant with arctic poverty,
But fragrant with familiar balm,
And happy in a household calm.

And such, O land of shining star
Hitched to a cart! thy poets are,
So wonted to the common ways
Of level nights and busy days,
Yet painting hackneyed toil and ease
With glories of the Pleiades.

For Bryant is an aged oak,
Beloved of Time, and sober folk;
And Whittier, a hickory,
The workman's and the children's tree;
And Lowell is a maple, decked
With autumn splendor circumspect.

Clear Longfellow's an elm benign,
With fluent grace in every line;
And Holmes, the cheerful birch, intent
On frankest, whitest merriment;
While Emerson's high councils rise,
A pine, communing with the skies.

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