82 THE MOUNTAINS 



"Trim set in ancient sward, his manful bole 

 Upbore his frontage largely toward the sky." 



As I sit at my desk I catch glimpses, now 

 and then, of several kinds of trees, and 

 trees as far apart in family, genus and 

 species as the American elm is from the 

 scarlet maple; and yet Lanier's lines 

 would in description answer well enough 

 for every individual tree of the several 

 kinds. 



In a whim of inclination, I once read, 

 at a single sitting, a large number of 

 poems about trees, and, to my surprise, 

 I found that in one poem only had the 

 poet seized any real tree-type-individu- 

 ality. This lone exception was the poem 

 by Wordsworth called "Yew Trees," con- 

 taining a description so extraordinary as 

 to warrant emphatic consideration in this 

 connection : 



"There is a yew-tree, pride of Lorton Vale, 

 Which to this day stands single, in the midst 

 of its own darkness. 



