Winter Trees—A Plea 
speech, this cypress chamber 
of colors and shades banishes 
all words and its tenants only 
feel. Yet it was into this 
sacred enclosure that a tourist 
burst discontent, whining, 
“ But after all that long climb 
I don’t see the dome of St. 
Peter’s!” 
One more word on the cy¬ 
press; it is not only tree, it is 
architecture, and counts as 
such on the landscape. You 
get used to this in Italy, and 
feel the spell of the fairy-land 
where even lemons are not 
dry - groceries in boxes and 
dozens, but are offered you 
with their pale gold gleaming 
on fresh stem and foliage. 
The cypress counts as col¬ 
umns, as walls, as gate posts— 
whatever the architect wills, 
and even dares reflect the sun 
like stone-work at eventide 
when shadows are long and lights are red. Next 
closest to the heart is the umbrella or stone pine, 
another wonder which make landscapes as unreal as 
walking in old pictures. Until seen in the flesh 
(they have hearts, and hearts are fleshly they have 
seemed the dizzy imagining of an artist, like a 
purple cow or other vision of the painter. But here 
LIVE-OAKS IN THE PUBLIC PARK AT ROME 
AROUND THE LAKE AT VILLA FALCONIERI 
they are in Italy, real trees, every-day practical trees, 
giving their lower limbs for man’s fuel and spreading 
their tops for the protection of his skin and the joy 
of his eye. Poet’s trees they are too—trees to wander 
under, to dream under—like those which crown 
Naples in the wondrous grove of Villa Floridiana, 
like those filling the expanse of Villa Borghese, 
Rome’s pleasure park. 
Lofty, impressive, inspir¬ 
ing—almost aloof, impersonal 
they seem—yet they are the 
poet’s inspiration. Hard 
by Ravenna’s sad decay, 
stretcbes seaward the pine 
forest where Dante paced in 
the bitterness of his exile from 
scenes he loved, and under the 
trees’ strong influence wrote 
his enduring thoughts. That 
pine forest stands now as 
then, and throuiih it flits the 
strong and bitter spirit of the 
Poet. 
Another came long after, 
Byron, and for two years trod 
this same forest—but the two 
cannot be spoken of together. 
It takes Nature’s patience 
and long-sight to harbor such 
dissimilarities in one setting. 
Shelley’s pine forest was 
the other side, way over 
toward Livorno, and got 
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