304 ARBOR DA Y MANUAL. 



THE BIRCH TREE. 



RIPPLING through thy branches goes the sunshine, 

 Among thy leaves that palpitate forever; 

 Ovid in thee a pining nymph had prisoned, 

 The soul once of some tremulous inland river, 

 Quivering to tell her woe, but, ah ! dumb, dumb forever ! 



While all the forest, witched with slumberous moonshine, 



Holds up its leaves in happy, happy silence, 



Waiting the dew, with breath and pulse suspended, 



I hear afar thy whispering, gleamy islands, 



And track thee wakeful still amid the wide-hung silence. 



Upon the brink of some wood-nestled lakelet, 



Thy foliage, like the tresses of a Dryad, 



Dripping about thy slim white stem whose shadow 



Slopes quivering down the water's dusky quiet, 



Thou shrink'st as on her bath's edge would some startled Dryad. 



Thou art the go-between of rustic lovers; 

 Thy white bark has their secrets in its keeping; 

 Reuben writes here the happy name of Patience, 

 And thy lithe boughs hang murmuring and weeping 

 Above her as she steals the mystery from thy keeping. 



Thou art to me like my beloved maiden, 



So frankly coy, so full of trembly confidences ; 



Thy shadow scarce seems shade, thy pattering leaflets 



Sprinkle their gathered sunshine o'er my senses, 



And nature gives me all her summer confidences. 



Whether my heart with hope or sorrow tremble, 

 Thou sympathizest still ; wild and unquiet, 

 I fling me down ; thy ripple, like a river, 

 Flows valleyward. where calmness is, and by it 

 My heart is floated down into the land of quiet. 



LOWELL. 



Behold the trees unnumbered rise, 



Beautiful, in various dyes ; 



The gloomy pine, the poplar blue, 



The yellow beech, the sombre yew, 



The slender fir that taper grows, 



The sturdy oak with broad-spread boughs. 



DYER. 



