these monumental inscriptions, tells us there were two hundred of them. The columns on which they were fixed served also to bear up the vast limbs of the tree, which began through age to become unwieldy. Thus this mighty plant stood many years in great state, the ornament of the town, the admiration of the country, and supported, as it were, by the princes of the empire. At length it felt the effects of war. Niestad was surrounded by an enemy, and the limbs of this venerable tree were mangled in wantonness by the besieging troops. Whether it still exists, I know not; but long after these injuries it stood a noble ruin, discovering, by the foundations of the several monuments, which formerly propped its spreading boughs, how far its limits had once extended.

I shall next celebrate the Lime of Cleves. This, also, was a tree of great magnificence. It grew in an open plain, just at the entrance of the city, and was thought an object worthy to exercise the taste of the magistracy. The burgomaster of his day had it surveyed with great accuracy, and trimmed into eight broad, pyramidal faces. Each corner was supported by a handsome stone pillar; and in the middle of the tree, among the branches, was cut a noble room, which the vast space contained within easily suffered, without injuring the regularity of any of the eight faces. To crown all, the top was curiously clipped into some kind of head, and adorned artificially, but in what manner, whether with the head of a lion, or a stag, a weather-cock, or a sun-dial, we are not told. It was something, however, in the highest style of Dutch taste. This tree was long the admiration and envy of all the states of Holland.

WILLIAM GILPIN, 1724-1807.

THE BIRCH-TREE.

Rippling through thy branches goes the sunshine,
Among thy leaves that palpitate forever;

Ovid in thee a pining Nymph had prisoned,

The soul once of some tremulous, inland river,

Quivering to tell her woe, but, ah! dumb, dumb forever!

While all the forest, witched with slumberous moonshine,
Holds up its leaves in happy, happy silence;

Waiting the dew, with breath and pulse suspended

I hear afar thy whispering, gleamy islands,

And track thee wakeful still amid the wide-hung silence.

Upon the brink of some wood-nestled lakelet,

Thy foliage, like the tresses of a Dryad,

Dripping about thy slim white stem, whose shadow

Slopes quivering down the water's dusky quiet,

Thou shrink'st, as on her bath's edge would some strolled Dryad.

Thou art the go-between of rustic lovers;

Thy white bark has their secrets in its keeping;

Reuben writes here the happy name of Patience,
And the lithe boughs hang murmuring and weeping
Above her, as she steals the mystery from thy keeping.

Thou art to me like my beloved maiden,

So frankly coy, so full of trembly confidences;
Thy shadow scarce seems shade, thy pattering leaflets
Sprinkle their gathered sunshine o'er my senses,
And Nature gives me all her summer confidences.

Whether my heart with hope or sorrow tremble,
Thou sympathized still; wild and unquiet,
I fling me down; thy ripple, like a river,
Flows valley-ward, where calmness is, and by it
My heart is floated down into the land of quiet.

J. R. LOWELL.

THE HEMLOCK-TREE.

FROM THE GERMAN.

O hemlock-tree! O hemlock-tree! how faithful are thy branches! Green not alone in summer time,

But in the winter's frost and rime!

O hemlock-tree! O hemlock-tree! how faithful are thy branches!

O maiden fair! O maiden fair! how faithless is thy bosom!
To love me in prosperity,

And leave me in adversity

O maiden fair! O maiden fair! how faithless is thy bosom !

The nightingale! the nightingale thou tak'st for thine example! So long as summer laughs she sings,

But in the autumn spreads her wings;

The nightingale! the nightingale thou tak'st for thine example!

The meadow-brook, the meadow-brook is mirror of thy falsehood! It flows so long as falls the rain;

In drought its springs soon dry again;

The meadow-brook, the meadow-brook is mirror of thy falsehood! Anonymous.

Translation of H. W. LONGFELLOW.

THE OAK.

IMITATED FROM THE ITALIAN OF METASTASIO.

The tall oak, towering to the skies,
The fury of the wind defies;
From age to age, in virtue strong,
Inured to stand, and suffer wrong.

O'erwhelmed at length, upon the plain
It puts forth wings, and sweeps the main;
The self-same foe undaunted braves,
And fights the winds upon the waves.

JAMES MONTGOMERY.

ON AN ANCIENT OAK.

FROM THE GREEK OF ANTIPHILUS.

Hail, venerable boughs, that in mid sky
Spread broad and deep your leafy canopy!
Hail, cool, refreshing shade, abode most dear
To the sun-wearied traveler, wand'ring near!
Hail, close inwoven bow'rs, fit dwelling-place
For insect tribes, and man's imperial race!
Me, too, reclining in your green retreat,
Shield from the blazing day's meridian heat.
Translation of J. H. MERIVALE

WOOD NOTES.

And such I knew a forest seer,
A minstrel of the natural year,
Foreteller of the vernal ides,
Wise harbinger of spheres and tides-

A lover true, who knew by heart,
Each joy the mountain dales impart;
It seemed that Nature could not raise

A plant in any secret place;
In quaking bog, or snowy hill.
Beneath the grass that shades the rill,
Under the snow, between the rocks,
In damp fields, known to bird and fox;

206

But he would come in the very hour
It opened in its virgin bower,

As if a sunbeam showed the place,
And tell its long-descended race.

It seemed as if the breezes brought him;
It seemed as if the sparrows taught him;

As if by secret sight he knew

Where, in far fields, the orchis grew.

Many haps fall in the field,

Seldom seen by wistful eyes;

But all her shows did Nature yield,

To please and win this pilgrim wise.
He saw the partridge drum in the woods,
He heard the woodcock's evening hymn;
He found the tawny thrush's broods;
And the sky-hawk did wait for him.
What others did at distance hear,
And guessed within the thicket's gloom,
Was showed to this philosopher,

And at his bidding seemed to come.

In unplowed Maine he sought the lumberer's gang,
Where from a hundred lakes young rivers sprang;
He trod the unplanted forest floor, whereon

The all-seeing sun for ages hath not shone;
Where feeds the moose and walks the surly bear,

And up the tall mast runs the woodpecker.

He saw beneath dim aisles, in odorous beds,

The slight Linnea hang its twin-born heads;

And blessed the monument of the man of flowers,

Which breathes his sweet fame through the northern bowers.

He heard, when in the grove, at intervals,

With sudden roar the aged pine-tree falls

One crash, the death-hymn of the perfect tree,

Declares the close of its green century.

Low lies the plant to whose creation went

Sweet influence from every element;

Whose living towers the years conspired to build-
Whose giddy top the morning loved to gild.
Through these green tents, by eldest Nature dressed,
He roamed, content alike with man and beast.
Where darkness found him he lay glad at night;
There the red morning touched him with its light.
Three moons his great heart him a hermit made,
So long he roved at will the boundless shade.

The timid it concerns to ask their way,

And fear what foe in caves and swamps can stray;

To make no step until the event is known,
And ills to come, as evils past, bemoan.
Not so the wise; no coward watch he keeps,
To spy what danger on his pathway creeps.
Go where he will, the wise man is at home-
His hearth the earth, his hall the azure dome;
Where his clear spirit leads him, there his road,
By God's own light illumined and foreshowed.

R. W. EMERSON.

A PINE-FOREST.

Those who have only lived in forest countries, where vast tracts are shaded by a dense growth of oak, ash, chestnut, hickory, and other trees of deciduous foliage, which present the most pleasing varieties of verdure and freshness, can have but little idea of the effect produced on the feelings by aged forests of pine, composed in great degree of a single species, whose towering summits are crowned with one dark-green canopy, which successive seasons find unchanged, and nothing but death causes to vary. Their robust and gigantic trunks rise a hundred or more feet high in purely proportioned columns before the limbs begin to diverge; and their tops, densely clothed with long, bristling foliage, intermingle so closely as to allow of but slight entrance to the sun. Hence the undergrowth of such forests is comparatively slight and thin, since none but shrubs and plants that love the shade can flourish under this perpetual exclusion of the animating and invigorating rays of the great exciter of the vegetable world. Through such forests, and by the merest foot-paths in great part, it was my lot to pass many miles almost every day; and had I not endeavored to derive some amusement and instruction from the study of the forest itself, my time would have been as fatiguing to me as it was certainly quiet and solemn. But wherever Nature is, and under whatever form she may present herself, enough is always proffered to fix attention and to produce pleasure, if we will condescend to observe with carefulness. I soon found that even a pineforest was far from being devoid of interest.

JOHN M. GODMAN, 1795-1829.