The Beech Tree

I HAVE always felt a sense of satisfaction that the

had so warm a place in his heart for the beech-tree. I do not forget that the American poet whom I most revere has said “True poetry springs not from rocks and trees; ” but the words were uttered when his soul was on fire with a great movement for human freedom and was hardly capable of a full recognition of the claims of Nature. Who shall say that the poetic germ latent in the young Mantuan’s heart did not receive its first awakening some bright summer day as he lay beneath that grove of old beeches with their stormbroken tops, so feelingly mentioned in the Eighth Eclogue, the cattle slaking their thirst at the reedy margin of the Mincius just below him, stray rays of sunlight from the soft Italian blue filtering down through the stirring leaves over his head and falling in dancing patches of gold upon the delicate green coverlet of his earthen couch, while the vague susurrus of the bees trembled upon his ears as now and then the fitful whiffs of Zephyrus passed away and allowed the leaves to cease their rustling, and in the distance the nibbling she-goats dotted those gently sloping hills at the rear, distending their udders with the juices of the cytisus towards the evening milking ?

What other tree in all the woods can keep up its companionship with the recipient human heart through all the varying moods of the year in equal measure with the beech ? As I look from my window now, a stately specimen across the road greets my eye with a harmonious blending of greens and golds and russets and rich dark browns, indescribable in the countless transition shades by which its leading colors are welded into a unified effect of restful and soul-satisfying beauty. The leaves of the two large walnut-trees which flank it on the right and left are already far on the road to a quick and unsightly decay. The November winds will catch the myriad leaves of my beech-trees and take them whirling over the crest of the hill, where they will find a restingplace in deep deposits in the edge of the college woods. Go there six months from now and stir them up, after the rains and snows of winter and spring have done their worst, and you will find hundreds of them still without a break, their glossy browns even yet a thing of joy and beauty. You can scarce tell when they pass back to their original dust. There is no time of the year when you cannot find them so, in any spot where large masses of them may huddle together for self-protection. part and close with the breeze. Love other trees as you will. All have their virtues when taken at the proper season of the year, from the proper point of view, or when you yourself are in the proper mood. My claim for my Lady Beech is that her virtues rise above all vicissitudes of time and mood and point of view. Go to her for rest from labors done or inspiration for duties still before you, go to her for communion in joy or comfort in sorrow, go to her in summer or winter, in fair weather or in foul, and what tree of all the forest can contest her primacy in power to render that aid which the sensitive human heart looks to outward nature to supply ?

But what of the tree itself, when frost and rain and wind have at last denuded it of its graceful mantle ? What of it ? Stand where you have it in full outline against the gray of a December sky, and look at the delicate tracery of its countless twigs upon that otherwise unbroken screen of snow-cloud. What artist’s hand could match that web of sinuous curves, dividing and subdividing as the eye passes upward and outward until it culminates in a lace-work of lithe and graceful beauty too intricate for human vision to analyze ? Your oaks and maples and elms have nothing to match that. Let the clouds begin to drop their feathery burden now, and see that mass of bewitching tracery softened and blurred and blended with the slow, tremulous motion of the falling flakes, and you have still another effect that the beech alone can give. If conditions be right, the flakes will cling fast to those limbs, and the outer circle, where all are lithe and slender, will gradually be transformed into long rolls of fleecy white, like the rolls of clean white wool that used to come back to our mothers from the carding machine, in the days when the hum of the spinning-wheel was heard in the land.

The night comes, and while you sleep the clouds clear away. Let us suppose you have the dyspepsia, or an early train to catch, or a six months old baby, or anything else whatever that will get you out of bed in time to watch the first rays of the sun at work among those snow-wreathed beech twigs. Who shall attempt to paint in mere words the colors that the crayons of Phœbus are spreading upon this royal canvas ? Here is all the glitter of Aladdin’s cave brought right to your window. With the gathering warmth of those piercing rays the snow begins gradually to let go its hold, and its soft muffled beating upon the deep white cushion below comes with the effect of some weird, irregular kind of music to the ear. Go back to your fire awhile and then look again. The smaller limbs are clean of snow now, but on the tip of each twig and at the point of every one of those long russet-jacketed buds which Nature has already provided for the coming spring hangs a tiny drop of water, sparkling like a diamond in the fresh sunlight, — a bewildering profusion of glory that no other tree but the beech can produce, simply because no other has the facilities for its proper distribution. We shall not linger over the equally wonderful effect when its limbs are robed with the hoar-frost, whether seen in the silvery glint of the moonlight, or under the full glow of the sun, or yet again through the vague curtain of a winter morning fog. Suffice it to say that no shift whatever of our varying and often intensely disagreeable winter weather will ever allow you to surprise the beech-tree in any dress or attitude out of keeping with its native grace, dignity, and beauty.

What can be more delicate than its fresh young leaves and blossoms, when the swelling buds have burst asunder and thrown off those broad, russet-brown scales, at the vitalizing touch of the spring sunshine and the mellow south-wind ? We need not follow it through the spring and summer. Since long before the days of Gallus and Lycoris young men and maidens have been carving their love in its receptive bark to grow with its growth, and tired mortals have been stretching their limbs beneath its shade, catching little glimpses of blue sky, white cloud, or golden sunshine as the pliant branches