THE GNARLED PINE-TREE, 



sheltered half do you ever properly realize 

 the ground-plan of your nature. Your 

 growth is the resultant of the incident 

 energies. And that, after all, is the case 

 with most of us ; especially with the stormy 

 petrels of our human menagerie. 



Yet even to you, too, have come the 

 consolations of love. " Not we alone," says 

 the poet, " have yearnings hymeneal." Late 

 developed on your cold spur, checked and 

 gnarled as you grew, there came to you yet 

 a day when your branches burgeoned forth 

 into tender pink cones, with dainty soft 

 ovules, all athirst for pollen ; while on your 

 budding shoots grew thick rings of rich 

 stamens, that flung their golden powder 

 adrift on the air with a lavish profusion 

 right strange in so slenderly endowed an 

 economy. But it is always so in nature. 

 These gnarled hard lives, as people think 

 them, are gilded brightest by the glow 

 and fire of love ; these poorest of earth's 

 children are made richest at last in the 



