Pine

“ Now, does the young man see that tall, dry pine, in the quiet valley below, with a slender young tree shooting up, and tenderly spreading its green branches around that aged trunk, so it would shield its bare sides in the colds of winter, and fan its leafless head in the heats of summer? ”

“ Beside a northern pine a boy Is leaning fancy-bound, Nor listens where with noisy joy Awaits the impatient hound. Cool grows the sick and feverish calm,— Relaxed the frosty twine,— The pine-tree dreameth of the palm, The palm-tree of the pine. As soon shall nature interlace Those dimly-visioned boughs, As these young lovers face to face Renew their early vows! ”

“ The peerless pine was the first to come, and the pine will be last to go!
We pillar the halls of perfumed gloom; we plume where the eagles soar;
The North-wind swoops from the brooding Pole, and our ancients crash and roar;
But where one falls from the crumbling walls shoots up a hardy score.
We spring from the gloom of the canyon's womb; in the valley's lap we lie ”

“ Yet speaking of decay. The aspiring pine
Wears his undying green; but the strong oak,
Like smitten giant, casts his honours down,
Strewing brown earth with emerald and gold.
Yon lofty elms, the glory of our land,
So lately drooping 'neath their weight of leaves,
With proud, yet graceful elegance, to earth,
Stand half in nakedness, and half in show
Of gaudy colours. ”

“ The scenery perpetually grows more wonderful and sublime: pine forests of impenetrable thickness, and untrodden, nay, inaccessible expanse spread on every side. Sometimes the dark woods descending, follow the route into the vallies, the distorted trees struggling with knotted roots between the most barren clefts; sometimes the road winds high into the regions of frost, and then the forests become scattered, and the branches of the trees are loaded with snow, and half of the enormous pines themselves buried in the wavy drifts. ”

“ Scarcely a specimen of any other tree is to be found associated with the pine. But there are some thickets of the little saw palmettos and a magnificent assemblage of tall grasses, their splendid panicles waving grandly in the warm wind, and making low tuneful changes in the glistening light that is flashed from their bent stems.
Not a pine, not a palm, in all this garden excels these stately grass plants in beauty of wind-waving gestures. Here are panicles that are one mass of refined purple; others that have flowers as yellow as ripe oranges, and stems polished and shining like steel wire. ”

“ If, at times, I dream behind all this a grove, with now and then one of its broad, steepling or columnar trees pushed forward upon the lawn, it is only there that I see anything so stalwart as a pine or so rigid as a spruce. ”

“ Coming at last to the rim of the forest, you look out over the sea, where go lumber-laden ships to all the world. Close by the beach, dwarfed and distorted by winds of the ocean, and nourished by its fogs, north-coast pine (Pinus contorta) extends its prostrate forms over the cliffs and dunes of the shore, just as your first acquaintance, the white-bark pine, spreads over the dunes and ridges of the mountain. They are brothers of a noble race. ”

“ Amid the firs, o’er the soundless snow.
Lo! the pine is singing its murmuring song,
Over our heads as we pass alone;
And every bough with pearl is hung,
Whiter than those that from ocean sprung. ”

“ Again the forest pageant changes. There are groves of pine stricken with hoary age, bearded like patriarchs with long, pendent streamers of colourless moss;285 then comes a young growth of pine, fore-doomed to early death which already shows in the bronze of premature decay. It is a beautiful spot, nevertheless, balsam-sweet and strewn with needles that nurture violets of yellow and purple, twin flowers and Queen's Cups. ”

“ It is an open cleared space, that mound beneath the pine-tree; a few low shrubs and seedling pines, with the slender waving branches of the late-flowering pearly-tinted asters, the elegant fringed gentian with open bells of azure blue, the last and loveliest of autumn flowers and winter-greens, brighten the ground with wreaths of shining leaves and red berries. ”

“ Over the rocks, amid the mosses, hang the long pendent ferns, in richer, darker green. And with the grand old pine and fir trees lifting their heads to the heavens, and the thick tanglewood of shrub and underbrush, there is grandeur, grace, and beauty in bewildering, changeful, and ravishing confusion. ”

“ Whose laurels wail thee with a shivering sound!—
And I—I pine through all the joyous day,
Through the long night I pine,—as fondly pines
The night's own bird, dissolving her lorn life
To song in moonlight woods.—Thou hear'st me not! ”

“ But the winds go to every tree, fingering every leaf and branch and furrowed hole; not one is forgotten: the Mountain Pine towering with outstretched arms on the rugged buttresses of the icy peaks, the lowliest and most retiring tenant of the dells—they seek and find them all, caressing them tenderly, bending them in lusty exercise, stimulating their growth, plucking off a leaf or limb as required, or removing an entire tree or grove, now whispering and cooing through the branches like a sleepy child, now roaring like the ocean ”

“ As they walked thus beneath the pines, holding each other’s hand like children, the sweet sad beauty of the dying day, the mystic silence of the wide valley at their feet, the deep shadow of the pines splashed with wide pools of gold, the liquid bell-like note of the bird, like a voice from another world, all together brought a great ease to strained nerves and tortured hearts. ”

“ It is pleasant to stand in the oak or white pine woods, and hear the slight, aery, winnowing sound of their wings, and their gentle, tremulous cooing. You will frequently discover a single pair in the depths of the wood sitting at noon upon the lower branches of the white pine; so silent and solitary, and with such a hermit-like appearance, as if they had never strayed beyond the skirts of the forest; while the acorn which was gathered in the woods of Maine is still undigested in their crops. ”

“ For the pine tree has the courage of its convictions—fine, simple, tenacious—as it has also that other quality of the strong soul: the power to stand alone. “Some say there is a precipice where one vast pine is frozen to ruin o’er piles of snow and chasms of ice ’mid Alpine mountains.” ”

“ One tree alone can live here, the pine, a wild creature, inhabitant of the forests and sterile coasts; there is a whole colony of them here; they crowd together fraternally, and cover the sand with their brown lamels; the monotonous breeze which sifts through them forever awakes their murmur ”

“ The sun beat fiercely on the woollen caps and heavy doublets of the men, till at length they gained the shade of one of those deep forests of pine where the dead and sultry air is thick with resinous odors, and the earth, carpeted with fallen leaves, gives no sound beneath the foot. ”

“ Many varieties of the red, yellow, and pitch pine, intermingled with the graceful larch, the picturesque beech and maple, birch, elm, oak, and numerous other tribes of forest timber, grow down close to the water’s side, spreading in stately grandeur over the broad plains, or stretching proudly up to the summits of the mountains that descend precipitously to the river. In summer the bright and cheerful green of the forests is exceedingly beautiful and refreshing to the eye, the dark pines alone forming a sombre contrast to the vivid freshness of the deciduous trees ”

“ A due proportion of the forest is still in its manly prime—tall, stout, straight trees, lifting their huge branches on high, and bearing aloft the solemn canopy of dark green that distinguishes "the scarcely waving pine." ”

“ And there is no sound in Nature quite so wonderful as that faint spiritual singing of pine trees, that gentle whirring of a forest when soft airs are moving⁠—that säuseln, susurrement, whispering. Midway in the wood, of course, a pine forest shouting in a free wind is simply the sea shouting on a sandy shore ”

“ When the brown cones fall, the seeds drop out from between the smooth, satin-like scales, and so, in the years to come, a dreaming mother pine broods over a whole forest of smaller trees. A pine is lonely and desolate, if [202] there are no smaller trees around it. A single one, towering against the sky, always means loneliness, but where you see a little clump of evergreens huddled together, braving the sleet and snow, it warms your heart. ”

“ Trees of light are the oak, which, despite the fable, resists the storm, the exquisite but robust birch, the pitch pine, which still grows at an altitude of eighteen hundred metres, and the even hardier larch, which attains the land of external snow; the shadow trees are the fir and the beech, with their delicate organisms, sensitive to frost, the attacks of the sun and the lack of water. ”

“ Some of it is desolate country where the boxed pines have fallen, or where an area has been burned but one comes now and then upon groves of shimmering and shining young trees,—is there any tree as beautiful as a young pine with the sunshine on it? ”

“ The impression on most people's minds must have been received more from pictures than reality, so far as I can judge, so ragged they think the pine; whereas its chief character in health is green and full roundness. It stands compact, like one of its own cones, slightly curved on its sides, finished and quaint as a carved tree in some Elizabethan garden; and instead of being wild in expression, forms the softest of all forest scenery, for other trees show their trunks and twisting boughs; but the pine, growing either in luxuriant mass, or in happy isolation, allows no branch to be seen. ”

“ For half a day and a night we have been traversing grazing-land, and for half a day fine timber growing in a soil of intense fertility. And now for half a day we are in a pine country, sometimes with wide levels of turf spreading out among the trees, sometimes with oak and walnut so thickly intermingled with the pines that the whole forms a magnificent forest. Passion-flowers entangle all the lower undergrowth, and up the dead trees climbs that fine scarlet creeper which is such an ornament of well-ordered gardens of some English country houses. ”

“ Mark the tall pine which has grown from a small seed which sent forth its root downwards and its trunk upwards, drawing nourishment from earth, air, and water, till it now waves its top to the passing breeze, a hundred feet above this dirty earth: or the oak or olive, which have maintained their respective positions a dozen centuries despite the operations of wind and weather, and have shed their foliage and their seeds to propagate their species and extend their kinds to different places. ”

“ The needles of the pine are the touchstone for the air. Any change in that element is revealed to the practiced eye by their livelier green or increased motion. They are the tell-tales. Now they are (the white pine) a cadaverous, misty blue, anon a lively . . . light plays on them, and they seem to erect themselves unusually, while the pitch pines are a brighter yellowish green than usual. The sun loves to nestle in the boughs of the pine and pass rays through them.—The scent of bruised pine leaves where a sled has passed is a little exciting to me now. ”

“ The little pine tree wished to grow and be tall, like the rest of the trees, for it wanted to see what was in the world outside of the forest. The tall pine trees would sing songs as the wind whistled through their branches, and the little pine tree waited day after day, so that it might be tall and sing songs, too. When summer came the birds would rest on the branches of this wee tree, but would not build nests, because it was too low. ”

“ It is thrilling business to bring those giant Pines down. The ground trembles under the stroke, while the reverberating echo of its fall, as it rings through mountains and valleys, may, on a still morning, be heard six or eight miles. Before felling the Pine, small trees are cut for bed-pieces, the Pine-tree falling across them transversely, to prevent it from becoming too deeply imbedded in the snow. ”

“ Fancy a pine, an oak, or an elm tree with trunk and limbs smoothly polished! What if the outside of your walls are somewhat uneven? Let them be so. The shadows will be all the richer, the vines will cling more closely, and maybe the birds will hang their nests in some sunny corner. ”

“ With this plant the whole world would seem rich though none other existed. It is not easy to keep on with the camp cloud while such plant people are standing preaching by the wayside.
During the afternoon we passed a fine meadow bounded by stately pines, mostly the arrowy yellow pine, with here and there a noble sugar pine, its feathery arms outspread above the spires of its companion species in marked contrast; a glorious tree, its cones fifteen to twenty inches long, swinging like tassels at the ends of the branches with superb ornamental effect. ”

“ There is nothing like a grove of pines to give a sense of warmth in winter and an air of coolness in summer, so does the slightest breeze make the pine-needles swish like the freshening sea. But to this scene, where pines made a friendly background, there were added oak, ash, and hickory trees, though in less quantity on the side of the river where were Jean Jacques Barbille’s house and mills. ”

“ How symbolical of the changes that have taken place in our country is the pine, that simplest of trees! In the earnest, upright, early days of America, the pine grew without knots. To-day every pine tree has so many knots in it that a person must rise at midnight in order to get them counted before breakfast. ”

“ Coolness and life. Is it that in his caves
He hears me? See, on yonder woody ridge,
The pine is bending his proud top, and now
Among the nearer groves, chestnut and oak
Are tossing their green boughs about. He comes! ”