ARBOR DAY ITS HISTORY AND OBSERVANCE. 69 



Then there is a large field for recitations and declamations appropriate 

 for the day. A considerable number of such may be gathered from the 

 essays in the earlier part of this publication, but our literature abounds 

 with them, and teachers should encourage their pupils to become 

 iamiliar with them, committing many of them to memory, thereby 

 enriching their minds with gems of thought to be their delightful pos- 

 session for life and a constant incentive to what is noblest, purest, and 

 best. 



MISCELLANEOUS READINGS. 



We can hardly see or think of trees without being reminded of Mr. Lowell. He 

 was eminently a lover of trees, and they were the inspiration of some of his best prose 

 and poetry. This love of trees led him to call his pleasant place of residence, in 

 Cambridge, "Elm wood." And no memorial of him would be more accordant with 

 his own feelings than a growing tree. This is abundantly shown by the following 

 letter, written only a few years ago, When it was proposed in one of our schools to 

 plant on Arbor Day a tree in his memory : 



"I can think of no more pleasant way of being remembered than by the planting 

 of a tree. Like whatever things are perennially good, it will be growing while we 

 are sleeping, and will survive us to make others happier. Birds will rest in it and 

 fly thence with messages of good cheer. I should be glad to think that any word 

 or deed of mine could be such a perennial presence of beauty, or show BO benign a 

 destiny." 



THE OAK. 



What gnarled stretch, what depth of shade is his? 



There needs no crown to mark the forest's king; 

 How in his leaves outshines full summer's bliss! 



Sun, storm, rain, dew, to him their tribute bring, 

 "Which he, with such benignant royalty 



Accepts, as overpayeth what is lent; 

 All nature, seems his vassal proud to be, 



And cunning only for his ornament. 



How towers he, too, amid the billowed snows, 



Anunquelled exile from the snmmer'a throne, 

 Whose plain, uncinctured front more kingly shows, 



Now that the obscuring courtier leaves are flown. 

 His boughs make music of the winter air, 



Jeweled with sleet, like some cathedral front 

 Where clinging snowflakes, with quaint art, repair 



The dents and furrows of Time's envious brunt. 



How doth his patient strength the rude March wind 



Persuade to seem glad breaths of summer breeze, 

 And win the soil that fain would be unkind, 



To swell his revenues with proud increase I 

 He is the gem ; and all the landscape wide 



(So doth his grandeur isolate the sense) 

 Seems but the setting, worthless all beside, 



An empty socket, were he fallen thence. 



So, from oft converse with life's wintry gales, 



Should man learn how to clasp with tougher roots 

 The inspiring earth how otherwise avails 



The leaf-creating sap that sunward shoots? 

 So every year that falls with noiseless flake 



Should fill old scars up on the storm ward side, 

 And make hoar age revered for age's sake, 



Not for traditions of youth's leafy pride. 



