The Knickerbocker Gallery/Trees
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Alfred B. Street
Trees.
By Alfred B. Street.
Wether pluming the mountain, edging the lake, eye-lashing the stream, roofing the waterfall, sprinkling the meadow, burying the homestead, or darkening leagues of hill, plain, and valley, trees have always "haunted me like a passion." Let me summon a few of them, prime favorites, and familiar to the American forest.
The aspen—what soft, silver-gray tints on its leaves, how smooth its mottled bark, its whole shape how delicate and sensitive! You may be sitting on the homestead lawn some summer noon, the trees all motionless, and the hot air trembling over the surface of the unstirred grass. Suddenly you will hear a fluttering like the unloosing of a rapid brook, and looking whence comes the sound, you will see the aspen shaking as if falling to pieces, or the leaves were little wings each striving to fly off. All this time the broad leaf of the maple close by, does not even lift its pointed edges. This soft murmur really sends a coolness through the sultry atmosphere; but while your ear is drinking the music and your eye filled with the tumultuous dancing, instantly both cease as if the tree were stricken with a palsy, and the quiet leaves flash back the sunshine like so many fairy mirrors.
Next the elm. How noble the lift and droop of its branches! With such graceful downward curves on either side, it has the shape of the Greek vase. Such lavish foliage also, running down the trunk to the very roots, as if a rich vine were wreathed around it! And what frame-works those branches shape, breaking the landscape beyond into half-oval scenes which look through the chiaroscuro as if beheld through slightly shaded glass. And how finely the elm leans over the brook—its native place—turning the water into ebony, and forming a shelter for the cattle from the heat. It is scattered, too, over the meadow, making shady nooks for the mowers at their noon-tide meal, shadowing also the farmer's gate and mantling his homestead in an affluence of green.
Then the maple. What a splendid cupola of leaves it builds up into the sky—an almost complete canopy from the summer shower. It reddens brilliantly when the blue-bird tells us spring has come, and, a few days later, its dropped fringes gleam in the fresh grass like flakes of fire. And in autumn, too, its crimson is so rich, one might term it the blush of the wood.
And the beech. How cheerfully its snow-spotted trunk looks in the deep woods—how fresh the green of its regularly-scalloped leaves! At spring-tide the tips of its sprays feather out in the glossiest and most delicate cream-satin, amid which the young leaf glows like a speck of emerald. And in the fall what rich clusters of fruit burthen the boughs! The pattering of the brown three-cornered beech-nut upon the dead leaves is constant in the hazy, purple days of our Indian summer, and makes a sweet music, almost continuous as the dripping of a rill, in the mournful forest.
The birch is a great favorite of mine. It reminds me of the whistles of my boyhood. Its fragrant bark—what delight it was to wrench it from the silvery wood for the shrill music I delighted in, particularly by the hearth-stone of my home!
"Conscience!" my aunt Katy used to ejaculate, holding her ears; "is that whistling coming again? John, (John is my name—John Smith,) do, do stop!"
And when came a shriller blast,
"John, you little torment! if you do n't stop, I'll box your ears!"
What splendid tassels the birch hangs out at the bidding of April!—tassels that Indian sachems were proud to wear at the most honored feasts of their nation.
And into such rich gold is it transmuted by October, a light is almost shed of its own within the sylvan recesses. The speckled bark of the black birch is glossy and bright, but give me the beauty of the white birch's coat. How like a shaft of ivory it gleams in the daylight woods—how the flame of moonlight kindles it into columned pearl!
Did you ever, while wandering in the forest about the first of June, have your eyes dazzled at a distance with what you supposed to be a tree laden with snow? It was the dogwood. Glittering in its white blossoms, each one spread over a broad leaf of the brightest verdure, pointed gauze upon emerald, there stands the pretty tree like a bride. The shadbush and cherry have dropped their white honors a month before, but the dogwood keeps company with the basswood and locust in brightening the last days of spring with its floral beauty. Up in the soft blue it lifts its wreathed crown, for it gathers its richest glow of blossom at its head, and makes the forest bright as with silver chandeliers.
While admiring the dogwood, an odor of exquisite sweetness may salute you; and if at all conversant in tree-knowledge you will know the censer dispensing this fragrance. But you will have to travel some distance, and you will do it as the hound tracks the deer, by scent, for the perfume fills the forest long before the tree catches the eye. At length you see it—the basswood—clustered with yellow blossoms, golden bells pouring out such strong, delicious fragrance, you realize the idea of Shelley:
Which flung from its bells a sweet peal anew
Of music so delicate, soft, and intense,
It was felt like an odor within the sense."
And the deep hum, too, about it—an atmosphere of sound—the festival of the bees surrounding the chalices so rich with honey.
I have mentioned the flowers of the locust and chestnut in conjunction with the basswood. Delicate pearl does the former hang out amid the vivid green of its beautiful leaves, and sweet is that pearl as the lips of the maiden you love.
And the chestnut—scattered thickly among its long, dark-green leaves are strings of pale gold blossoms—haunts also of the revelling bee. Does the school-boy ever forget "the days that he went" truanting after the auburn fruit embedded in velvet within, but without protected by porcupines of husks? With what delight did the young good-for-nothings pelt down those yellow husks to be crushed open by indefatigable heels! Ah! the aurora of life—how bright, how merry it is!
For ever linked in the minds of these truants with the chestnut is the walnut. How the green, smooth globes that insphere the fruit make the eyes of the young vagabonds dance, and how eagerly they mount to shake down those globes, each fracturing at the fall, and letting out the round ivories that in turn imprison the dark gold meats!
And now the oak, "the brave old oak," and so forth. Suppose yourself in a wood! Do you see that little brown vegetable cup with a braided cover—there by the dead maple leaf and tuft of crimson-headed moss? Yon robin just planted his foot upon and covered it. And then do you see that towering tree whose head seems nearly to touch the white cloud above it! Look! upon its very apex there is a bird, seemingly the size of this wild pigeon on the beech-tree, but in reality an eagle. A great many years have intervened between the two objects, it is true, but you think twice ere realizing that yon seamed, stern, sturdy oak once nestled in this acorn. So of all trees, you say, from the seed. True again, but none strikes you so forcibly in this contrast as the oak. And what a tree it is! First piercing the mould, a tiny needle that the ground-squirrel would destroy with a nibble, and then rearing grandly toward the sun a wreath of green to endure for ages. Does the wild wind dash upon it? Its shakes its proud head, but no more bends its whole shape than yon crag. Doth the arrowy sleet strike it? Its leaves only make clicking music; and as for the early snow, it bears it up easily as a deer would fragments of kalmia-blossoms on his antlers. How finely its dark green stands out from the lighter hues of the beeches, birches, and maples! And then how it keeps old Time at a distance! Why, decades are nothing to it. The child gathers the violet at its foot; as a boy, he pockets its dropped acorns; a man, he looks at its height, towering up, towering up, and makes it the emblem of his ambition. Years after, with white hairs and palsied limbs, he totters at noontide to lie within its shade and slumber, "perchance to dream" of that last sleep which can not be distant, and which "knows no waking." But has the oak changed? Mocker of the storm, stern darer of the lightning, there he stands, the same, and seemingly for ever. Challenger of Time, defier of earth's changes, there he stands the pride of the forest, satirizing, in his mute language, alike the variations of fortune and evanescence of man.
And he does all things in a grand, slow way, unlike other trees. In spring-time, when the aspen has showed for a month its young leaves of silver gray, when the beech has thrust forth its beautiful feathers, when the maple has made a red rain of its glowing blossoms upon the forest floor, the oak still looks as he did when January was frowning upon his branches. When the aspen has elaborated its small leaves into thick foliage, when the beech has spangled itself over with emerald, when the maple has hung upon its slender stems its broad pearl-lined verdure, no tint of green upon the oak. He stands yet in dark disdain, as if mourning the perished winter. But at last, when the woodland is smiling in its fully-developed glory, when the tardy blossoms of the locust and tulip-tree are drenching the air with delicious sweetness, then stirs the oak. Little brown things are scattered over his great boughs, which in due time become long, deep-veined leaves; and lo! the regal oak has donned his splendid robe. The summer passes, and the autumn comes. What stands at the corner of yon wood, swathed in a mantle of the true imperial? Crimsons, and yellows, and golden-browns are flashing all around him, as though there were a carnival among the trees, but no hue is brighter than that of the brave old oak in his robe of royal purple. And he is in no more haste to let that robe of his go than in putting it on. When the shrieking blasts have torn its mantle from every other tree, the oak still clings to his, as if he said to those shrieking blasts, "I defy your fury!" When the snow-bird comes twittering among the woods to tell them the snow will shortly be showering loose pearl all through their gaunt domains, the oak yet holds to his mantle, blanched and tattered though it be. High amid the snow-drifts, firm amid the blasts, the pale crackling leaves still cling, with nothing in the wide, bleak forests to keep them company save here and there a shivering lingerer upon the beech-tree. Often it is only when their successors come "to push them from their stools" that the old leaves quit the gallant oak and lie down to perish. So a health to the oak!
We will merely touch, in passing, upon the horse-chestnut, with its great glistening spring-buds bursting into cones of pearly, red-spotted blossoms that almost cover its noble dome of foliage; upon the hemlock, with its masses of evergreen needles, and the cedar, with its misty blue berries; upon those tree-like shrubs—the hopple, with its gigantic leaves serving as sylvan goblets at pic-nics; the sumac, with its clusters of splendid crimson; the sassafras, diffusing from its thick leaf a most delicious breath; the laurel, arching above the brooks a roof radiant with immense bouquets of rose-touched snow, and even garlanding the apex of the water-beech with its superb chalices, while its younger sister, the ivy, crouches at the foot of the tamarack and spruce, rich in red-streaked urns of blossoms; and the witch-hazel, smiling at winter, with its curled, sharp-cut flowers of golden velvet.
We come now to the pine, of all my greatest favorite.
Ho! ho! the burly pine! Hurrah! hurrah for the pine! The oak may be king of the lowlands, but the pine is the king of the hills—aye, and mountains too.
Ho! ho! the burly pine! how he strikes his clubbed foot deep into the cleft of the rock, or grasps its span with conscious power! There he lifts his haughty front like the warrior-monarch that he is. No flinching about the pine, let the time he ever so stormy. His throne is the crag, and his crown is a good way up in the heavens, and as for the clouds he tears them asunder sometimes, and uses them for robes. Then hurrah again for the pine! say I. Reader, did you ever hear him shout? Did you ever hear thunder?—for there is a pine mountain on the upper Delaware that out-roars, in a winter storm, all the thunder you ever heard! Stern, deep, awfully deep, that roar makes the heart quiver. It is an airquake of tremendous power. And his single voice is by no means silvery when he is "in a breeze." When the stern warrior-king has aroused his energies to meet the onslaught of the storm, the battle-cry he sends down the wind is heard above all the voices of the greenwood. His robe streams out like a banner, and so wild does he look, you would think he was about to dash himself from his throne of rock upon the valley beneath. But no; his great foot grasps more closely the crag, and when, after a while, the tempest leaves him, how quietly he settles to his repose! He adorns his crown with a rich wreath caught from the sunset, and an hour after, he wears the orbed moon as a splendid jewel upon his haughty brow. The scented breeze of the soft evening breathes upon him, and the grim warrior-king wakes his murmuring lute, and oh! such sounds—so sweet, so soothing! Years that have passed live again in the music; tones long since hushed echo once more in the heart; faces that have turned to dust—but how loved in the old time!—glimmer among the dusky boughs; eyes that years ago closed on earth to open in heaven smile kindly upon us. We lie down in the dark shadow upon the mossy roots and are happy—happy in a sad, sweet, tender tranquillity that purifies the soul, and while it makes us content with earth, fills us with love for heaven.