Singing tree

“ Have you never felt your heart leap to the singing of a robin among the branches of an apple-tree in full blossom, or shiver and grow sad at sunset, when the cry of a lonely whip-poor-will comes wailing through the dusk?
There is the music of trees in the spring, when their blossoms are sweet and their leaves are just unfolding—soft, cheerful, happy music, full of tenderness and love. Then there is [Pg 305] the low, drowsy music of the summer-time, when bumble-bees and lady-bugs and humming-birds fill the warm air with greedy droning as they plunder the wild flowers of honey. ”

“ As the vine and the little tree talked of these things, the cedars watched with increasing interest the wonderful scenes over and beyond the confines of the forest. Presently they thought they heard music, and they were not mistaken, for soon the whole air was full of the sweetest harmonies ever heard upon earth. [109]
"What beautiful music!" cried the little tree. "I wonder whence it comes."
"The angels are singing," said a cedar; "for none but angels could make such sweet music." ”

“ However, in the present case I think I have some good grounds for believing that the "singing tree" does serve some other purpose than that of a mere fancy title to a paper. It is surely the home of the male bird, where he awaits the coming of his bride, the place from which he loves to sing, and so in time it becomes the loadstone which eventually guides her to him. ”

“ Break off a branch, and carry it to plant in your garden; it will take root as soon as it is put into the earth, and in a little time will grow to a fine tree."
The princess went into the wood, and by the harmonious concert she heard, soon discovered the singing-tree.
When the princess had obtained possession of the branch of the singing-tree, she returned again to the bird, and said, "Bird, what you have yet done for me is not sufficient. My two brothers, in their search for thee, have been transformed into black stones on the side of the mountain. ”

“ As Prelude to the production of “The Evergreen Tree,” the following kind of Song Overture and informal Ceremony are suggested for such large-scale types of the Masque’s production as are witnessed and performed by all classes, races, ages and creeds of the community.
After night-fall, on a winter’s evening, let us imagine men, women and children of a town or city gathered together out of doors in a public square or park, or indoors within some level-floored structure, to assemble by the community Christmas Tree, and to join in general singing under a leader. ”

“ He started a thicket along the opposite bank of Singing Water where it bubbled past her window, and in it he placed in graduated rows every shrub and small tree bearing bright flower, berry, or fruit. Those remaining he used as a border for the driveway from the lake, so that from earliest spring her eyes would fall on a procession of colour beginning with catkins and papaw lilies, and running through alders, haws, wild crabs, dogwood, plums, and cherry intermingled with forest saplings and vines bearing scarlet berries in fall and winter. ”

“ To thy light revels through the sombre deep
Wood's shadows to a space among the trees,
Where the breeze
Makes music through the branches for thy dance,
And the large-eyed and silent deer stand round
Peeping through tree-trunks, and each forest sound
—The trickling stream's
Murmur in its dreams,
The shepherd's pipe, far-echoing by chance,—
Melt all for thee
To one soft harmony,
While for the lighting of thy mossy slope
The moon thy lover sheds an opal glow,
Pale silver-green, the colour of the leaves
Of olive-trees,
The limelight on the stage for Youth and Joy and
Hope? ”

“ Each one like a child of high lineage bearing the sigil of race.
The open hands of my tree held out to the touch of the air
As love that opens its arms and waits on the lover's will;
The curtsey, the sway, and the toss of the spray as it sports with the breeze;
Rhythmical whisper of leaves that murmur and move in the light;
Crying of wind in the boughs, the beautiful music of pain:
Thus do you sing and say
The sorrow, the effort, the sweet surrender, the joy.
Come! tented leaves of my tree;
High summer is here, the moment of passionate life,
The hushed, the maternal hour. ”

“ Now it seems to me that the supremacy of the pine in the imagination is not that it is more beautiful in itself than other trees, but that the beauty of the pine seems more symbolic than other beauty, and symbolic of more and of greater things. It is full of the sturdiness and strength of the ground, but it is of all trees the tree to see the sky with, and its voice is the voice of the horizons, the voice of the marriage of the heavens and the earth ”

“ It is as if the pine-trees called me From ceiled room and silent books, To see the dance of woodland shadows, And hear the song of April brooks! As in the old Teutonic ballad Of Odenwald live bird and tree, Together live in bloom and music, I blend in song thy flowers and thee. Earth's rocky tablets bear forever The dint of rain and small bird's track Who knows but that my idle verses May leave some trace by Merrimac! The bird that trod the mellow layers Of the young earth is sought in vain; The cloud is gone that wove the sandstone, From God's design, with threads of rain! ”

“ Unheard, yet full of speaking spells;
Within the rock, within the tree,
A soul of music dwells.
A mute symphonic sense that thrills
The silent frame of mortal things;
Its heart beats in the ancient hills,
In every flower sings.
To harmony all growth is set—
Each seed is but a music mote,
From which each plant, each violet,
Evolves its purple note.
Compact of melody, the rose
Woos the soft wind with strain on strain
Of crimson; and the lily blows
Its white bars to the rain.
The trees are pæans; and the grass
One long green fugue beneath the sun—
Song is their life ”

“ She never became a joyous tree—her youth had been too sorrowful for that—but she was content. Each night, when all the forest filled with creeping shadows, she sang her songs to the Stars, and she came to love the Night Wind dearly. Each night the Little Tree dreamed the dream the Spirits of the Woods had given her, and strange to tell, it was always the same dream. It was such a pleasant, lovely dream that sometimes the Little Tree was puzzled, and wondered whether she really lived in her beautiful dream, and only dreamed that she lived in the forest. ”

“ The jingling, clanging, shrieking fiends of sound
Expire within the wide world-circling breeze.
The soul amid a multitude of trees,
Or grass enveloped on the fragrant ground,
Is lifted to its utmost starry round,
And listens to celestial harmonies.
From this unspeakably divine rebirth,
Its sordid life returning shows through rifts
How purely spreads the sky, how musical
The streams and breezes flow across the earth,
How light the tree its fruity load uplifts,
How easily the weed is beautiful. ”

“ However beautiful the scenery of glades and woods, however cleverly the light is made to change and dance among the trees—and it is manipulated now like a set of organ stops—it still seems almost wrong to listen with open eyes to music that, unaided, can show us a glorious summer's day, and make us see the swaying of the tree-tops, and hear the brush of the wind against the leaves. ”

“ And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A tree that may in summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;
Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree. ”

“ How proudly it lifts its bare head to the winter storms, and with what a full heart it rejoices when the spring has come again! How grand its voice is, too, when it talks with the wind: a thousand aeolian harps cannot equal the beauty of the sighing of a great tree in leaf. ”

“ Low-swung across this desert sky of mine,
If anywhere they shine on one who goes
Swift-footed to like end on kindred road.
Yet do I seek thee—asking of the wind,
Old Master-Singer, singing down the world,
Mingling all music in his endless song,
If he has caught some word, some tone, of thine
To stir my silence like a trumpet call.
I seek thee where the tall pines laugh and lean
Against the sun, against the storm and cloud;
For thou art strong like them and swift to joy;
Strong to endure; deep-rooted into life ”

“ But why are they so shy of exhibiting their talent? Why do they make such a secret of it? Can it be that they are just developing their musical abilities?
When we reached the thorn-tree, on that last evening, we seated ourselves on the bank beside the road, to enjoy the music of the meadow, and to see the shrike family. At the nest all was still, probably settled for the night, but the "lord and master" of that snug homestead stood on a tall maple-tree close by, in dignified silence, watching our movements, no doubt. ”

“ Those who loved his lays gathered around him, and while they listened to the deep music that he poured forth, and to the thrilling strains by which it was accompanied, the sun often set below the horizon, and his beams shed a purple light on the rising ground, while the plain country and the woods were covered with the mists of evening. Had the tree a voice, or could its leaves form words when shaken by the wind, how much of ancient history—how many tales of loves and woes—of human suffering and human joys, would be unfolded! ”

“ It was a long, long summer, full of sunshine and bird-music, and the meadow was like a garden, and the old oak-tree looked down upon the grass and flowers and saw that no evil befell them. A long, long play-day it was to the little vine, the daisy, and the violet. The [36] crickets and the grasshoppers and the bumblebees joined in the sport, and romped and made music till it seemed like an endless carnival. ”

“ Look for example at the pine, how its branches, balancing each other, ray out from the tapering stem in stanza after stanza, how spray answers to spray, and leaf to leaf in ordered strophe and antistrophe, till the perfect tree stands an embodied ode, through which the unthinking wind cannot wander without finding the melody that is in it and passing away in music. ”

“ The tree, with its leaves in luxuriance shading
My path in the tune-yielding time of the year,
Now sighs in its dirge, while its foliage, fading,
Descends to its sepulchre withered and sere.
And yet I regard it with feelings the fonder,
With feelings of mingled compassion and pain,
As in pity I gaze on its branches, and ponder
Of once fragrant beauty what fragments remain.
For that barren tree with adornment so fleeting,
That blows in the autumn wind bleak and forlorn,
Bespeaks the sad state of a heart that is beating,
Bereft of the pleasures that once it has borne. ”

“ When the men at the saw have cut nearly through the tree, they sing out a drawling, musical "Stand aw-ay," gauging the moment with the skill of woodsmen, for there is no sign to the lay eye. In a few moments the giant tree begins to fall stiffly. ”

“ From the noontide's glow;
Thou, beneath whose branches,
Touch'd with moonlight gleams,
Lay our early poets
Wrapt in fairy dreams.
O tree of our fathers! O hallowed tree!
A glory is gone from our home with thee. ”

“ And the oak-tree and the ivy were wed one June night, and there was a wonderful celebration in the greenwood; and there was most beautiful music, in which the pine-trees, the crickets, the katydids, the frogs, and the nightingales joined with pleasing harmony.
The oak-tree was always good and gentle to the ivy. "There is a storm coming over the hills," he would say. "The east wind tells me so; the swallows fly low in the air, and the sky is dark. Cling close to me, my beloved, and no harm shall befall you." ”

“ It is our opinion that everything except man is laughing and rejoicing. Trees shake their leaves with a softer sound. Rocks look moist and soft, at least where the moss grows. Even the solitary old pine tree chords his harp, and sings soft and low melodies with plaintive undulations! ”

“ There was no sound save the delicious music of the fresh springy breeze, as it wantoned with the glistening leaves, or played with the gushing waters, inciting them to break in tiny waves against the hedge; and the rich thrilling melody of the happy birds, calling to each other from tree to tree, or sending forth such a gush of song, such a trilling flow of rapture, that their slender throats seemed quivering with the effort ”

“ Almost any tree located on a cliff or on the edge of a mountain, becomes a musician of the first order. It is apt to take on the sorrowful tendencies of solitude. The weepings, wailings, murmurings, groanings, sighs and whispers of the universe vibrate through its branches. [Pg 115] It would seem as if such a tree were trying to express many mysterious wonders of which man has little knowledge.
The trees are not altogether dependent upon their leaves for their music. The barren branches of fall and winter sing in a most attractive way. ”

“ Nothing green is left except "the fir-tree and the box-tree and the pine-tree together," patiently enduring cold and snow so as to be on hand when the Holy Night comes round, and the Heavenly Babe is born, to make his humble home glad and beautiful with their green wreaths and branches. The birds that peopled the woods and made them merry with their music have gone south, leaving their summer home silent and desolate. ”

“ The grass is fill'd with buzzing insect throngs,
There's music in the air, and every tree
Is vocal with the wild-bird's gladsome songs,
Songs unrestrain'd by care or memory of wrongs.
A million tiny drops of crystal dew,
In shining splendor make the meadows fair ”

“ They are scattered all along the river's edge, where only wild trees besides are found; and, amidst the flowerless and odorless boughs of ash and birch and oak and nopal, one feels more than ever the force of that compliment and comparison which the love-lorn wife pays her husband, in the song of songs which is Solomon's, "As the apple-tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the sons." ”