...there is hope for a tree, if it is cut down, that it will sprout again, and that its shoots will not cease. Though its root gro...ws old in the earth, and its stump dies in the ground, yet at the scent of water it will bud and put forth branches like a young plant. But mortals die, and are laid low; humans expire, and where are they?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The life of a good man will hardly improve us more than the life of a freebooter, for the inevitable laws appear as plainly in the... infringement as in the observance, and our lives are sustained by a nearly equal expense of virtue of some kind. The decaying tree, while yet it lives, demands sun, wind, and rain no less than the green one. It secretes sap and performs the functions of health. If we choose, we may study the alburnum only. The gnarled stump has as tender a bud as the sapling.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The birch stripped of its bark, or the charred stump where a tree has been burned down to be made into a canoe,--these are the onl...y traces of man, a fabulous wild man to us. On either side, the primeval forest stretches away uninterrupted to Canada, or to the "South Sea"; to the white man a drear and howling wilderness, but to the Indian a home, adapted to his nature, and cheerful as the smile of the Great Spirit.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The Anglo-American can indeed cut down, and grub up all this waving forest, and make a stump speech, and vote for Buchanan on its ...ruins, but he cannot converse with the spirit of the tree he fells, he cannot read the poetry and mythology which retire as he advances. He ignorantly erases mythological tablets in order to print his handbills and town-meeting warrants on them.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The tree the tempest with a crash of wood Throws down in front of us is not to bar... Our passage to our journey's end for good, But just to ask us who we think we are....LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Tree at my window, window tree, My sash is lowered when night comes on;... But let there never be curtain drawn Between you and me.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
On Thursday morning going through the quiet woods... it is not Thursday. To dwellers in a wood almost every species of tree has its voice as well as its feature. At the passing of the breeze the fir-trees sob and moan no less distinctly than they rock; the holly whistles as it battles with itself; the ash hisses amid its quiverings; the beech rustles while its flat boughs rise and fall. And winter, which modifies the note of such trees as shed their leaves, does not destroy its individuality.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »