ON THE MANUSCRIPTS OF GOD 



tween man and his sylvan brothers are 

 Lowell's lines from "Under the Willows": 



"Myself was lost, 



Gone from me like an ache, and what remained 

 Became a part of the universal joy. 

 My soul went forth, and, mingling with the tree, 

 Danced in the leaves." 



Undoubtedly, Wordsworth or Shelley 

 might have written a better "Forest Hymn" 

 than Bryant's, had they been as strongly 

 moved by the forest as was the American 

 poet. But the point here made is simply 

 that no forest or tree apparently so moved 

 them, though the ardent tree-lover is moved 

 by everything about a tree. Like an en- 

 amored youth who finds trivial no fact con- 

 nected with his sweetheart, the tree-lover is 

 responsive to every trait, feature, and habit 

 of his sylvan divinities. The masterful grip 

 of their roots in the soil; their smooth, rough, 

 or deep-fissured bark; the wonderful grains 

 of their wood; their slight or stately figures; 

 the strange ichors in their veins; the lavish 

 bounty of those that give nuts and fruit ; the 



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