286 ARBOR DA Y MANUAL. 



In the dim woods, and the white woodman first 

 Opened these fields to sunshine, turned the soil 

 And strewed the wheat. An unremembered Past 

 Broods, like a presence, mid the long gray boughs 

 Of this old tree, which has outlived so long 

 The flitting generations of mankind. 



Ye have no history. I ask in vain 

 Who planted on the slope this lofty group 

 Of ancient pear-trees that with spring time burst 

 Into such breadth of .bloom. One bears a scar 

 Where the quick lightning scored its trunk, yet still 

 It feels the breath of Spring, and every May 

 Is white with blossoms. Who it was that laid 

 Their infant roots in earth, and tenderly 

 Cherished the delicate sprays, I ask in vain, 

 Yet bless the unknown hand to which I owe 

 This annual festival of bees, these songs 

 Of birds within their leafy screen, these shouts 

 Of joy from children gathering up the fruit 

 Shaken in August from the willing boughs. 



Ye that my hands have planted, or have spared, 

 Beside the way, or in the orchard -ground, 

 Or in the open meadow, ye whose boughs 

 With every summer spread a wider shade, 

 Whose herd in coming years shall lie at rest 

 Beneath your noontide shelter? who shall pluck 

 Your ripened fruit ? who grave, as was the wont 

 Of simple pastoral ages, on the rind 

 Of my smooth Beeches some beloved name ? 

 Idly I ask, yet may the e) r es that look 

 Upon you, in your later, nobler growth, 

 Look also on a nobler age than ours; 

 An age when, in the eternal strife between 

 Evil and Good, the Power of Good shall win 

 A grander mastery. 



* * * * i * BRYANT. 



A man was lately tried at Aberdeen for obstructing a revenue officer; it un- 

 fortunately came out on the trial, that the prisoner had been guilty of planting 

 the Tree of Liberty, where no tree had ever grown before, and where Liberty 

 was not in the most flourishing state. The consequence was, a judgment, that 

 he should be publicly whipped, and banished the kingdom for fourteen years. 



THOMAS PAINE, 1793. 



