Before he has learned his a b c in the beautiful but mystic lore of the wilderness which Spenser and Dante had just begun to read,... he cuts it down, coins a pine-tree shilling (as if to signify the pine's value to him), puts up a deestrict schoolhouse, and introduces Webster's spelling book.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Strong to break dead things, the young tree, drained of sap,... the old tree, ready to drop, to lift from the rotting bed of leaves, the old crumbling pine tree stock.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is an odd jealousy: but the poet finds himself not near enough to his object. The pine-tree, the river, the bank of flowers bef...ore him, does not seem to be nature. Nature is still elsewhere.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
With sudden roar and aged pine-tree falls,-- One crash, the death-hymn of the perfect tree,... Declares the close of its green century.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The pine tree seems to listen, the fir tree seems to wait, and neither with impatience:Mthey give no thought to the little people ...below them whose impatience and curiosity eat them up alive.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Think how stood the white pine tree on the shore of the Chesuncook, its branches soughing with the four winds, and every individua...l needle trembling in the sunlight,--think how it stands with it now,--sold, perchance, to the New England Friction-Match Company!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
No yard! but unfenced Nature reaching up to your very sills. A young forest growing up under your windows, and wild sumachs and bl...ackberry vines breaking through into your cellar; sturdy pitch pines rubbing and creaking against the shingles for want of room, their roots reaching quite under the house. Instead of a scuttle or a blind blown off in the gale,--a pine tree snapped off or torn up by the roots behind your house for fuel. Instead of no path to the front-yard gate in the Great Snow,--no gate--no front-yard,--and no path to the civilized world.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »