We shall forget these first humble flowers of spring by-and-by when we find a brilliant cardinal flower, or a showy lady’s slipper, just as we forget the timid, tender tones of the bluebird when the grand song of the grosbeak floods the evening air, or the exquisite melody of the hermit thrush spiritualizes the leafy woods; just as many a man forgets the ministrations of his humbler friends in early life when he has climbed into the society of those whom earth calls great.  But the aspens will neither grieve nor murmur.  They will continue to make delightful color contrasts with their smooth white trunks at the gateways of the dark woods in winter and whisper to every lightest breeze with their delicate leaves in summer.  The aspen, like the grass, hastens to cover every wound and burn on the face of nature.  It follows the willow in reclaiming the sandy river bottoms and replaces the pines which fire has swept from the Rocky Mountain slopes.  It has a record in the rocks and a richer story in literature.  Its trembling leaves have caught the attention of all the poets from Homer until now.  The Scottish legend says they tremble because the cross of Calvary was made from an aspen tree.  The German legend says the trembling is a punishment because the aspen refused to bow when the Lord of Life walked in the forest.  But the Hebrew chronicler says that the Lord once made his presence upon the earth heard in the movement of the aspen leaves.  “And it shall be, when thou shalt hear a sound of going in the tops of the aspen [wrongly translated mulberry] trees, that then thou shalt go forth to battle; for God is gone before thee to smite the host of the Philistines.”  What a fine conception of the nearness of the Omnipresent and the gentleness of the Almighty!  No sound or sign from the larger trees!  Only the whisper of the lightest leaves in the aspen tops when the Maker of the world went by!

The aspen was made the chief tree in the groves of Proserpine.  And Homer, in describing the Cyclops’ country, speaks of it as a land of soft marshy meadows, good rich crumbling plow land, and beautiful clear springs, with aspens all around them.  How much that sounds like a description of Iowa!

* * * * *

The willow is equally distinguished.  The roots of its “family tree” are in the cretaceous rocks and its branches spread through the waters of Babylon, the Latin eclogues, the wondrous fire in the Knightes’ Tale, Shakespeare’s plays, the love songs of Herrick and Moore, and across the ocean to the New World, adorning the sermons of Cotton Mather, the humor of Hosea Bigelow, and the nature poems of Whittier.

    "For ages, on our river borders,
      These tassels in their tawny bloom
    And willowy studs of downy silver
      Have prophesied of spring to come.

    “Thanks, Mary, for this wildwood token
      Of Freya’s footsteps drawing near;
    Almost, as in the rune of Asgard,
      The growing of the grass I hear."_