Apr 14, 2013

The Tree Lovers

I was straightening out a drawer today and came across my card collection. I find beautiful cards that I believe I will one day frame....best laid plans.
Anyway, in amongst them was a paper with a poem on it. There is no author listed on the sheet.
I wanted to share the poem cause I am in love with it. If you know who wrote it....please let me know so I can give credit where it is due.

The Tree Lovers

They grew in the fringe of woodland at the foot of the homestead hill,
Where ran like a silver ribbon a dimpling summer rill -
A spruce and a leafy maple - so close together they grew
That hardly a lance of sunlight might pierce their greenness
through.

Their mingled branches swaying cast ever a cooling shade
O'er the strip of emerald grassland where the happy children
played,
And a slender lad and thoughtful, with dreamy eyes of blue,
Said the tree was a maple maiden and the spruce her lover true.

The fancy pleased the children, as fancies children will,
For it gave them a sense of friendship with the trees below the hill:
As if the spruce and the maple had a life to their own akin,
And beneath their bark imprisoned beat human hearts within.

They saw how the maple nestled to the spruce's sheltering side,
As his rugged green arms clasped her with fond protecting pride.
He the taller and stronger; she the more graceful tree,
And never could human lovers more kind and faithful be.

When the winter snows were silver, and the winter winds
were keen,
The gray-cloaked bride was leafless but the sturdy spruce was green;
And when the springtime rapture thrilled all the woodlands
through,
The tender tints of maple were blent with his somber hue.

All through the days of summer they talked and whispered low,
While the gentle west-winds wavered their branches to and fro;
And in the autumn the little maple, in her splendor of crimson gay,
Stood proudly close to her lover in his rugged and dark array.

The children have grown and wandered from the ken of the homestead hill,
But the trees through seasons many are green and faithful still.
Still nestles the little maple to her knightly lovers side,
And still the spruce tree shelters with his mighty arms his bride.

Though the winter winds are biting, but the closer drawn are they,
As fond as when summer sunbeams among their branches play:
Time passes o'er them as lightly as it does o'er the ribbon rill,
There, as each season passes, at the foot of the homestead hill.
 

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