Choice Specimens of American Literature, and Literary Reader · Chapter 265=343.= the Planting of the Apple-Tree
This chapter is not translated yet. You are reading the original.
Come, let us plant the apple-tree! Cleave the tough greensward with the spade; Wide let its hollow bed be made; There gently lay the roots, and there Sift the dark mould with kindly care, And press it o'er them tenderly, As, round the sleeping infant's feet, We softly fold the cradle-sheet: So plant we the apple-tree.
What plant we in the apple-tree? Buds, which the breath of summer days Shall lengthen into leafy sprays; Boughs, where the thrush with crimson breast Shall haunt and sing and hide her nest. We plant upon the sunny lea A shadow for the noontide hour, A shelter from the summer shower, When we plant the apple-tree.
What plant we in the apple-tree? Sweets for a hundred flowery springs, To load the May-wind's restless wings, When, from the orchard-row, he pours Its fragrance through our open doors; A world of blossoms for the bee; Flowers for the sick girl's silent room; For the glad infant, sprigs of bloom, We plant with the apple-tree.
What plant we in the apple-tree? Fruits that shall swell in sunny June, And redden in the August noon, And drop as gentle airs come by That fan the blue September sky; While children, wild with noisy glee, Shall scent their fragrance as they pass, And search for them the tufted grass At the foot of the apple-tree.
And when above this apple-tree The winter stars are quivering bright, And winds go howling through the night, Girls, whose young eyes o'erflow with mirth, Shall peel its fruit by cottage-hearth, And guests in prouder homes shall see, Heaped with the orange and the grape, As fair as they in tint and shape, The fruit of the apple-tree.
The fruitage of this apple-tree, Winds, and our flag of stripe and star, Shall bear to coasts that lie afar, Where men shall wonder at the view, And ask in what fair groves they grew; And they who roam beyond the sea, Shall look, and think of childhood's day, And long hours passed in summer play In the shade of the apple-tree.
Each year shall give this apple-tree A broader flush of roseate bloom, A deeper maze of verdurous gloom, And loosen, when the frost-clouds lower, The crisp brown leaves in thicker shower; The years shall come and pass, but we Shall hear no longer, where we lie, The summer's songs, the autumn's sigh, In the boughs of the apple-tree.
And time shall waste this apple tree. Oh, when its aged branches throw Thin shadows on the sward below, Shall fraud and force and iron-will Oppress the weak and helpless still? What shall the tasks of mercy be, Amid the toils, the strifes, the tears Of those who live when length of years Is wasting this apple-tree?
"Who planted this old apple-tree?" The children of that distant day Thus to some aged man shall say; And gazing on its mossy stem, The gray-haired man shall answer them: "A poet of the land was he. Born in the rude, but good, old times; 'Tis said he made some quaint old rhymes On planting the apple-tree."
* * * * *
=Maria Brooks, 1795-1845.= (Manual, p. 523.)