Trees, Forests and Mountains

There's nothing that keeps its youth, So far as I know, but a tree and truth.

I never knew how soothing trees are—many trees and patches of open sunlight, and tree presences; it is almost like having another being.

But it is the same with man as with the tree. The more he seeks to rise into the height and light, the more vigorously do his roots struggle earthward, downward, into the dark, the deep - into evil.

Two Voices are there; one is of the sea,

Mountains are the beginning and the end of all natural scenery.

Hills peep o’er hills, and Alps on Alps arise!

Dark behind it rose the forest,

This is the forest primeval.

I think that I shall never see

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.

I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do.

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,

I think that I shall never see A poem lovely as a tree. 1

Of all the trees that grow so fair, Old England to adorn, Greater are none beneath the Sun, Than oak, and ash, and thorn.

This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks… Stand like Druids of old.

O Caledonia! stern and wild, Meet nurse for a poetic child! Land of brown heath and shaggy wood; Land of the mountain and the flood!

Where’er you walk, cool gales shall fan the glade, Trees, where you sit, shall crowd into a shade: Where’er you tread, the blushing flow’rs shall rise, And all things flourish where you turn your eyes.

Orpheus with his lute made trees, And the mountain-tops that freeze, Bow themselves, when he did sing.

Hills whose heads touch heaven.