The Planting of the Apple Tree.
13
Shall fraud and force and iron willOppress the weak and helpless still? What shall the tasks of mercy be,Amid the toils, the strifes, the tearsOf those who live when length of years, Is wasting this apple tree?
"Who planted this old apple tree?"The children of that distant dayThus to some aged man shall saу;And gazing on its mossy stem,Tho 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."
