I've
read all the books but one
Only remains sacred: this
Volume of wonders, open
Always before my eyes.
Kathleen
Raine
O never harm
the dreaming world,
the world of green, the world of leaves,
but let its million palms unfold
the adoration of the trees
It is a love in darkness wrought
obedient to the unseen sun,
longer than memory, a thought
deeper than the graves of time.
The turning spindles of the cells
weave a slow forest over space,
the dance of love, creation,
out of time moves not a leaf,
and out of summer, not a shade.
Kathleen Raine, Collected Poems - Vegetation, 1956
"Today
I saw the catkins blow
Altho' the hills are white with snow;
While
throsles sang, "The sun is good",
They waved their banners in the wood.
They
came to greet the lurking Spring
As messengers from Winter's King.
Dorothy
Una Ratcliffe (February)
When
all thoughts
Are exhausted
I slip into the woods
And gather
A pile of shepherd's purse.
Like the little stream
Making its way
Through the mossy crevices
I, too, quietly
Turn clear and transparent.
Zen
poet Ryokan
"Exotic
stranger, whose most costly scent
Might, with sweet odour, flood a Continent,
Whose opulent voluptuousness looks down
Amazed upon an English country town,
(So Messalina, exiled, might we see
Brooding, astonished, at a Parish tea) -
What do you here, lost Empress? How old
Our sun must seem, our warmest winds, how cold!
What thoughts are yours? Those petals of thick cream
Lie lapped and laved in a continuous dream
Of forests, dark as death, yet shining bright
With tropic blooms, all insolence and might
Which poison with hot breath the violent air,
Their frantic perfume heavy like despair!"
Lady
Margaret Sackville (Magnolia)
"Birches,
frail whispering company, are these?
Or lovely women rooted into trees?
Daughters of Norsemen, on a foreign shore
Left hostage, while the galley draws away,
Beating the rise and fall of manifold oar,
Beating a pathway to the broken coasts,
Forgetful of its ghosts.
V.
Sackville-West
How
do I love you, beech-trees, in the autumn,
Your stone-grey columns a cathedral nave
Processional above the earth's brown glory.
I
was a child, and loved the knurly tangle
Of roots that coiled above a scarp like serpents,
Where I might hide my treasure with the squirrels.
I
was a child, and splashed my way in laughter
Through drifts of leaves, where underfoot the beechnuts
Split with crisp crackle to my great rejoicing.
V.
Sackville-West (Beechwoods at Knole)
Let my soul, a shining tree,
Silver branches lift towards thee,
Where on a hallowed winter's night
The clear-eyed
angels may alight.
Siegfried Sassoon,
Tree and Sky
"Thus
yields the cedar to the
axe's edge,
Whose arms give shelter to the princely eagle,
Under whose shade the ramping lion slept,
Whose top-branch overpeer'd Jove's spreading tree,
And kept low shrubs from winter's
powerful wind."
William
Shakespeare (III Henry VI, Act V, Sc.2)
"Tis
thought the king is dead. We'll not stay -
The bay-trees in our country are withered."
William
Shakespeare (Richard II, Act 2, Sc. 4)
"When
roasted crabs hiss in the bowl,
Then nightly sings the staring owl."
William
Shakespeare (Love's Labour Lost)
"And
sometimes lurk I in a gossip's bowl
In very likeness of a roasted crab."
William
Shakespeare (Midsummer Night's Dream)
"I
offered him my company to a willow-tree ......
to make him a garland, as being forsaken."
William
Shakespeare (Much Ado about Nothing, Act 2, Sc. 1)
"Tell
him, in hope, he'll prove a widower shortly,
I'll wear the willow garland for his sake."
William
Shakespeare (III Henry VI, Act 3, Sc. 3)
"How
I shake .... In very truth do I, an 'twere an aspen leaf."
William
Shakespeare (II Henry IV, Act 2, Sc. 4)
"Hast
thou so much withstood,
Dumb and unmoving tree,
That now thy hollow wood
Stiffens disdainfully
Against the soft spring airs and soft spring rain,
Knowing too well that winter comes again?"
Edward
Shanks (A Hollow Elm)
"For
in the morning the tall pear stands white
With fragile petals that are shed at night,
And the apple wears her trembling sweet array
For hardly longer than a short spring day.
Would they might further live or would that I
Might see three springs without a break go by!"
Edward
Shanks (The Flowering Trees)
"Already
now behind the glistening petals,
Slowly grow round and hard
The fruit which will, within the sugary pulp,
Hold the immortal seed."
Edward
Shanks (In the Orchard)
"Still
the unmoving winter trees
Hold up the pure curves of their boughs,
Forms clothing calm immortal life
No change of time or state can rouse."
Edward
Shanks (Winter Trees)
“
and heard the autumnal leaves like light footfalls of spirits passing
through the streets”
P.
B. Shelley “Ode to Naples”
“As
the sap rises in the trees
As the sap rises in the trees a
violent green
So
rises the wrath of Nature’s
Creatures
At man”
Stevie
Smith “Alone in the woods”
THE
HEDGE
Hawthorn
“The
hedge formed, as it were, a succession
of chapels that were bedecked with flowers
like a wayside altar”
I
sprawl now and tower above men. The years
have passed by. My stems have hardened with each
passing frost and the snow splays me. I can feel
the wind – it whispers through spaces which
each year, grow greater. I have become bare
at the base, in the ditch, and at night I hear
the voles and the hedgehogs pass through me.
My leaves tap on their backs and the backs
of the birds making nests, out of mud and of moss
deeper inside me. Their voices, at dawn, wake me.
My
white blooms mass upon twigs in the season
and green-fingered leaves surround them. I feed
and protect thousands; I even touch men
who pass in their cars, with their windows undone
not knowing, at times, what has moved them.
My anthers are pink, my stamens are white;
they call in the bees and winged things and throngs
of all kinds hum round me. And deeper within
hidden by thorn, are the young of the thrush
and the mouse: I let no man pass through me.
It
is getting cold here; my berries have shone
and been taken. Someone has come and at first
my stems shudder. They have walked and walked
round me, observing my shape and sensing my
depths with their palms. The clipping, when it comes
is rhythmic, and gentle, the tips of the blades held
parallel to my vertical. I can see clear blue eyes
and hands inside gloves. Someone is singing to me
and cleansing dead wood. She brushes the surface
of my leaves and I am become again: magnificent.
Linda
Snell
SALIX
FRAGILIS
(Crack
Willow)
Spring,
and I’m waiting near water
to be taken in ways that would
surprise you. I wait for licks
and bites at my skin, so furrowed
and dry, you’d not think it could
cool you. I am willing you closer –
I have one extra gift to make you.
There
now. I watch your dog crack
just one of my fingers, swim me
across a river, and root me deep
on the other side. And there I can touch
you still. Water flows on through the heart
of us. You are walking and looking up.
My long leaves freshen and freshen!
Linda
Snell
Much can they praise the trees so straight and high,
The sailing pine,the cedar proud and
tall,
The vine-prop elm, the poplar never
dry,
The builder oak, sole king of
forests all,
The aspin good for staves, the cypress funeral,
The laurel, meed of mighty conquerors
And poets sage, the fir that weepest
still,
The yew obedient to the bender's will,
The birch for shafts, the sallow for the
mill,
The myrrh sweet-bleeding in the bitter
wound,
The warlike beech, the ash for nothing
ill,
The fruitful olive, and the platane
round,
The carver
holm, the maple seldom inward
sound.
Edmund Spenser, Faerie Queene
The tree of
love its roots hath spread
Deep in my heart, and rears its head;
Rich are its fruits: they joy dispense;
Transport the heart, and ravish sense.
In love's sweet swoon to thee I cleave,
Bless'd source of love . . . .
St. Francis of
Asissi, Into Love's Furnace I
am Cast.
"Perfection
is my goal
And nothing less can satisfy my soul:
But I await
Haltingly that blest state
Wounded by human hate;
How lovely now to see
Perfection flowering in a blossoming tree.
Marie
C. Stopes (Be ye therefore Perfect)
"Know
ye the willow-tree
Whose grey leaves quiver,
Whispering gloomily
To yon pale river?
Lady, at even-tide
Wander not near it:
They say its branches hide
A sad lost spirit."
Thackeray
(The Willow-Tree)
Ay me! ay me!
the woods decay and fall;
The vapours weep their burthen to the
ground.
Man comes and tills the earth and lies
beneath,
And after many a summer dies the swan.
Me only cruel immortality consumes:
I wither slowly in thine arms,
Here at the quiet limit,
Here at the quiet limit of the world.
A white-haired shadow roaming like a
dream,
The ever silent spaces of the East.
Far-folded mists, and gleaming halls of
morn.
Alfred Lord Tennyson, Tithonus
"Dark
Yew, that graspest at the stones
And clippest towards the dreamless head,
To thee, too, comes the golden hour,
When flowers is feeling after flower."
Tennyson
(In Memoriam)
"Glastonbury,
where the winter thorn
Blossoms at Christmas, mindful of our Lord."
Tennyson
(The Holy Grail)
"Hard
by, a poplar shook alway,
All silver-green with gnarled bark."
Tennyson
(Mariana)
"Lo!
in the middle of the wood
The folded leaf is woo'd from out the bud
With winds upon the branch, and there
Grows green and broad, and takes no care,
Sun-steep'd at noon, and in the yellow moon
Nightly dew-fed; and turning yellow
Falls, and floats adown the air."
Tennyson
(The Lotus-Eaters)
"Willows
whiten, aspen quiver,
Little breezes dusk and shiver
Tho' the wave that runs forever
By the island in the river
Flowing down to Camelot."
Tennyson
(The Lady of Shallot)
"O
blackthorn myriad budded,
Lifting your tiny fists of clenched white!
Be braver, Bush, for Winter is vanished quite!
Your fears forget, and open your hands shut tight!
Now for eyes' delight
Your treasures unlock, that our ways be flooded
With beauty! With snowy blossom thick
Each naked bough, each bare sharp stick
Cover, that hither whoever strays
May shout unawares, as he stands at gaze!
Edward
Thompson (Barren Sloe)
The great
sea
Has sent me adrift
It moves me
As the weed in a great river
Earth and the great weather
Move me
Have carried me away
And move my inward parts with joy.
Uvavnuk,
an Eskimo shaman woman
"Many
a tree is found in the wood,
And every tree for its use is good;
Some for the strength of the gnarled root,
Some for the sweetness of flowers or fruit."
H.
Van Dyke (Salute to the Trees)
“Ghosts
of the world-wood: the trees are felled,
Stumps;
puny saplings which replace them
will outgrow me and then outlive me.”
Michael
Vince “The Thicket”
"There
are the twisted hawthorn trees
Thick-set with buds, as clear and aple
As golden water or green hail -
As if a storm of rain had stood
Enchanted in the thorny wood,
And, hearing fairy voices call,
Hung poised, forgetting how to fall."
Mary
Webb (Green Rain)
'Tis
a brave tree. While round its boughs in vain
the warring winds of January bites and girds,
It holds the clusters of its crimson grain,
A winter pasture for the shivering birds.
Oh, patient holly, that the children love,
No need for thee of smooth blue skies above:
Oh, green strong holly, shine amid the frost;
Thou dost not lose one leaf for sunshine lost."
Augusta
Webster (The Holly)
"Reach
the bays -
I'll
tie a garland here about his head;
'Twill keep my boy from lightning."
John
Webster (Vittoria Corumbona)
"I believe a leaf of grass is no less
the journey-work of the stars,
And the pismire (ant) is equally perfect, and a grain of sand, and the egg
of the wren,
And the tree-toad is a chef-d’oeuvre for the highest,
And the running blackberry would adorn the parlors of heaven,
And the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery,
And the cow crunching with depress’d head surpasses any statue,
And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels."
Walt Whitman
“Why
are there trees I never walk under
but large and melodious thoughts descend upon me?”
Walt Whitman
(Song of the Open Road)
“One impulse from a vernal
wood
May teach you more of man,
Of moral evil and of good,
Than all the sages can.”
William Wordsworth
(The Tables Turned)
".........but
the hazels rose
Tall and erect, with tempting clusters hung,
A virgin scene! - A little while I stood,
Breathing with such suppression of the heart
As joy delights in; and, with wise restraint
Voluptuous, fearless of a rival, eyed
The banquet.
Wordsworth
(Nutting)
Nature
never did betray
The heart that loved her.
William
Wordsworth (1770-1850)
Let the trees be consulted
before you take any action
every time you breathe in thank a tree
let tree roots crack parking lots at the world bank headquarters
let loggers be druids specially trained and rewarded
to sacrifice trees at auspicious times
let carpenters be master artisans
let lumber be treasured like gold
let chainsaws be played like saxophones
let soldiers on maneuvers plant trees give police and criminals a shovel
and a thousand seedlings
let businessmen carry pocketfuls of acorns
let newlyweds honeymoon in the woods
walk don't drive
stop reading newspapers
stop writing poetry
squat under a tree and tell stories.
John Wright
“O Chestnut
tree, great rooted blossomer,
Are you the leaf, the blossom or the
bole?
O body swayed to music, O brightening
glance,
How can we know the dancer from the
dance.”
William Butler Yeats (Among School
Children)
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