And they name their trees with a thousand names,
Calling them after their Arts and Aims;
   And some, they climb for the fun of the thing,
   But most go up at the call of the King. 
Some scale a tree that they fear to name,
For it bears great blossoms of scarlet shame. 
   But they eat of the fruit of the nameless tree,
   Because they are Glugs, and their choice is free.

But every eve, when the sun goes West,
Over the mountain they call The Blest,
   Whose summit looks down on the city of Gosh,
   Far from the reach of the great King Splosh,
The Glugs gaze up at the heights above,
And feel vague promptings to wondrous love. 
   And they whisper a tale of a tinker man,
   Who lives in the mount with his Emily Ann.

A great mother mountain, and kindly is she,
Who nurses young rivers and sends them to sea. 
   And, nestled high up on her sheltering lap,
   Is a little red house with a little straw cap
That bears a blue feather of smoke, curling high,
And a bunch of red roses cocked over one eye. 
   And the eyes of it glisten and shine in the sun,
   As they look down on Gosh with a twinkle of fun.

There’s a gay little garden, a tidy white gate,
And a narrow brown pathway that will not run straight;
   For it turns and it twists and it wanders about
   To the left and the right, as in humorous doubt. 
’Tis a humorous path, and a joke from its birth
Till it ends at the door with a wriggle of mirth. 
   And here in the mount lives the queer tinker man
   With his little red dog and his Emily Arm.

And, once in a while, when the weather is clear,
When the work is all over, and even is near,
   They walk in the garden and gaze down below
   On the Valley of Gosh, where the young rivers go;
Where the houses of Gosh seem so paltry and vain,
Like a handful of pebbles strewn over the plain;
   Where tiny black forms crawl about in the vale,
   And stare at the mountain they fear them to scale.

And Sym sits him down by his little wife’s knee,
With his feet in the grass and his back to a tree;
   And he looks on the Valley and dreams of old years,
   As he strokes his red dog with the funny prick ears. 
And he says, “Still they climb in their whimsical way,
While we stand on earth, yet are higher than they. 
   Oh, who trusts to a tree is a fool of a man! 
   For the wise seek the mountains, my Emily Ann.”

So lives the queer tinker, nor deems it a wrong,
When the spirit so moves him, to burst into song. 
   ’Tis a comical song about kettles and pans,
   And the graces and charms that are Emily Ann’s. 
’Tis a mad, freakish song, but he sings it with zest,
And his little wife vows it of all songs the best. 
   And he sings quite a lot, as the Summer days pass,
   With his back to a tree and his feet in the grass.