Ye noble oaks, symmetrical and vast; Ye chestnuts, flowering now in many a plume; Ye beeches beautiful, whose branches cast A welcome to me as the wood's green gloom I enter; all ye forms which round me loom Arboreal, friends I feel ye are to me, Of whose true friendship there's for doubt no room, For what more kindly being than The Tree! Nay, more than friends, kinsmen of mine ye are, Great shapes, who through the rolling year do stand In one spot rooted, but whose spirits far Do wander, gladsome, o'er the pleasant land. Poets ye are who, in a world of strife And labor frenzied, live the dreamer's life. |