Here, the cedar, palmy-branched;
      Here, the hazel low;
    Here, the aspen, quivering ever;
      Here, the powdered sloe. 
    Wondrous was their form and fashion,
      Passing beautiful to see
    How the branches interlaced,
    How the leaves each other chased,
      Fluttering lightly hither, thither on the wind-aroused tree.

    Then he spake to those wood-dwellers: 
      ’Ye are like to men,
    And I learn a lesson from ye
      With my spirit’s ken. 
    Like to us in low beginning,
      Children of the patient earth;
    Born, like us, to rise on high,
    Ever nearer to the sky,
      And, like us, by slow advances from the minute of your birth.

    ’And, like mortals, ye have uses—­
      Uses each his own: 
    Each his gift, and each his beauty,
      Not to other known. 
    Thou, O oak, the strong ship-builder,
      For thy country’s good,
    Givest up thy noble life,
    Like a patriot in the strife,
      Givest up thy heart of timber, as he poureth out his blood.

    ’Thou, O poplar, tall and taper,
      Reachest up on high;
    Like a preacher pointing upward—­
      Upward to the sky. 
    Thou, O holly, with thy berries,
      Gleaming redly bright,
    Comest, like a pleasant friend,
    When the dying year hath end,
      Comest to the Christmas party, round the ruddy fire-light.

    ’Thou, O yew, with sombre branches,
      And dark-veiled head—­
    Like a monk within the church-yard,
      When the prayers are said,
    Standing by the newly-buried
      In the depth of thought—­
    Tellest, with a solemn grace,
    Of the earthly dwelling-place,
      Of the soul to live for ever—­of the body come to nought,

    ’Thou, O cedar, storm-enduring,
      Bent with years, and old,
    Standest with thy broad-eaved branches,
      Shadowing o’er the mould;
    Shadowing o’er the tender saplings,
      Like a patriarch mild,
    When he lifts his hoary head,
    And his hands a blessing shed,
      On the little ones around him—­on the children of his child.

    ’And the light, smooth-barked hazel,
      And the dusky sloe,
    Are the poor men of the forest—­
      Are the weak and low. 
    Yet unto the poor is given
      Power the earth to bless;
    And the sloe’s small fruit of down,
    And the hazel’s clusters brown,
      Are the tribute they can offer—­are their mite of usefulness.

    ’When the awful words were spoken,
      “It is finished!”—­
    When the all-loving heart was broken,
      Bowed the patient head;
    When the earth grew dark as midnight
      In her solemn awe—­
    Then the forest-branches all
    Bent, with reverential fall—­
      Bent, as bent the Jewish foreheads at the giving of the law.