320 NATURE-STUDY REVIEW [16:7— Oct., 1920 



Bayard Taylor believed he inherited his poet's soul from an ances- 

 tral pine tree for he says 



"All outward wisdom yields to that within, 

 Whereof nor creed nor canon holds the k ey 

 vVe only feel that we have been, and evermore shall be. 

 And thus I know, by memories unfurled 

 In rarer moods, and many a nameless sign, 

 That once, in Time, and somewhere in the world 

 I was a towering Pine. 



Thence am I ade a poet: thence are sprung 

 Those motions of the soul, that sometimes reach 

 Beyond the grasp of art, for which the tongue 



Is ignorant of speech 

 And if some wild, full gathered harmony 

 Roll its unbroken music through my line, 

 There lives and murmurs, faintly though it be, 

 The Spirit of the Pine." 



It remained for Lanier the most sensitive of our Nature poets to 

 express the nearer relation of the tree to his soul 



"Tell me, sweet burly-bark's, man-bodied Tree 

 That mine arms in the dark are embracing, dost know 

 From what fount are these tears at thy feet which flow? 

 They rise not from reason, but deeper inconsequent deeps, 

 Reason's not one that weeps. 

 What logic of greeting lies 

 Betwixt dear over-beautiful trees and the rain of the eyes?" 



Although the mass of human kind have by no means reached to 

 the heights of the poets in relation to trees and although we still 

 lay waste our forest lands, yet there is undoubtedly a growing sense 

 of the value of trees and a feeling for them abroad in America. 

 Some years since, it became necessary because of changes in plan 

 of roads to cut down some elms on the Cornell Campus; the 

 laborers did this work in the early morning to avoid the indigna- 

 tion of the students passing on their way to class-rooms. This 

 was rather hard on the laborers but we regarded it as a sign of a 

 trend of sentiment in the right direction. 



