34 
THE ARBOR DAY LADY 
NATURE POEM 
In some withdrawn, unpublic mead, 
Let me sigh upon a reed, 
Or in the woods, with leafy din, 
JWhisper the still evening in: 
Some still work give me to do,— 
Only—be it near to you! 
For I’d rather be thy child 
And pupil, in the forest wild, 
Then to be the king of men elsewhere, 
And most sovereign slave of care; 
To have one moment of thy dawn, 
Than share the city’s year forlorn. 
—Henry David Thoreau. 
“Ah, bare must be the shadeless ways, and 
bleak the path must be, 
Of him who, having open eyes, has never 
learned to see, 
And so has never learned to love the beauty 
of a tree.’’ 
