152 ARBOR DAY 



''Whether is better, the gift or the donor? 



Come to me," 



Quoth the pine-tree, 



" I am the giver of honor. 



My garden is the cloven rock, 



And my manure the snow; 



And drifting sand-heaps feed my stock, 



In summer's scorching glow. 



He is great who can live by me: 



The rough and bearded forester 



Is better than the lord ; 



God fills the scrip and canister, 



Sin piles the loaded board. 



The lord is the peasant that was, 



The peasant the lord that shall be; 



The lord is hay, the peasant grass, 



One dry, and one the living tree. 



Who liveth by the ragged pine 



Foundeth a heroic line; 



Who liveth in the palace hall 



Waneth fast and spendeth all.* 



on which the breath of the pines has not blown and their shadow 

 waved." The great pine on the ridge over Sleepy Hollow was 

 chosen by him as his monument. When a youth, in Newton, he 

 had written, "Here sit Mother and I under the pine-trees, still 

 almost as we shall lie by and by under them." (E. W. Emerson, 

 in the Centenary Edition.) 



* Compare the essay on "Manners": "The city would have died 

 out, rotted, and exploded, long ago, but that it was reinforced 

 from the fields. It is only country which came to town day 

 before yesterday that is city and court to-day." 



