OF TREES 



TREES 



love their great, strong boles and limbs, the many- 

 coloured sequence of their robes, the beauty of their 

 quiet lives. 



Somehow as we sit beneath their sheltering shade 

 when sorrow comes, they seem to rest and hearten 

 us ; when we smile, are ready to dance their laughing THE SYMPATHY 



boughs and leaves, that dip and curtsy in the 

 summer breeze ; have much to tell us when we stand 

 and listen to the music of winter's chords of many 

 notes sounded by their leafless fretted twigs : they 

 speak to us in unformed words, would almost seem to 

 sympathise and humour us, and so to win our hearts. 



And though in flowerless days we fully appre- 

 ciate the evergreen, the stiff neat fir, the polished 

 leaf, the wondrous shades and silvered greens of 

 conifers and choice shrubs, rich toned and lustrous, 

 it is surely the great wild trees of the tangled woods 

 and fields that are the most human and friendly. 



Poets and writers in their adoration of flowers 

 have given their imagination full play, and enriched 

 us with a flower language, endowed them with a 

 power and influence, in which to speak to us ; but 

 strong and entwined as our love may become for our 



173 



