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Quotations about Trees
Welcome to my page of quotations about trees, man’s brethren in nature as they are called. I’ve no idea why “advocates for the preservation of woodlands” (a.k.a.
How dear the woods are! You beautiful trees! I love every one of you as a friend. ~Lucy Maud Montgomery, Anne of Avonlea, 1909
There's nothing wrong with having a tree for a friend. ~Bob Ross, The Joy of Painting
At evening I came to the wood, and threw myself on the breast
Of the great green Mother, weeping, and the arms of a thousand trees
Waved and rustled in welcome, and murmured "Rest—Rest—Rest!
"The leaves, thy brothers, shall heal thee, and thy sisters, the flowers, bring peace."
~Richard Le Gallienne, "At Evening I Came to the Wood," New Poems, 1910
Now we enter the ancient wood. In what wild forms the gnarled and mossy boughs are twisted, what a sensation of sacred repose. ~Henry James Slack (1818–1896), The Ministry of the Beautiful, "Conversation III: The Oak-wood," 1850
Well, one can't get over the habit of being a little girl all at once.... I'm sure I'll always feel like a child in the woods. These walks home from school are almost the only time I have for dreaming.... [H]ere in the woods I like best to imagine quite different things…I'm a dryad living in an old pine, or a little brown wood-elf hiding under a crinkled leaf. That white birch you caught me kissing is a sister of mine. The only difference is, she's a tree and I'm a girl, but that's no real difference. ~Lucy Maud Montgomery, Anne of Avonlea, 1909
Is not the smell of forests delicious? it seems to ascend like the smoke of incense. ~Henry James Slack (1818–1896), The Ministry of the Beautiful, "Conversation III: The Oak-wood," 1850 [Edith speaking
Some dust of Eden eddies round us yet.
Some clay o' the Garden, clinging in the breast,
Down near the heart yet hidden unmanifest.
Last eve in gardens strange to me I let
The path lead far: and, lo, my vision met
Old forfeit hopes, I, as on homeward quest,
By recognizing trees was bidden rest,
And pitying leaves looked down and signed, "Forget!"
~Arthur Upson, "Dust of Eden," Octaves in an Oxford Garden, 1902
Trees are tall because they need to be in two places at once. Ponderosa that for a little while… ~Arizona Forest Fund, 2018 @az_forest_fund Instagram post
If a man walks in the woods for love of them and see his fellows with impartial eye afar, for half his days, he is esteemed a loafer; but if he spends his whole day as a speculator, shearing off those woods, he is esteemed industrious and enterprising — making earth bald before its time. ~Henry David Thoreau
But no weather interfered fatally with my walks, or rather my going abroad, for I frequently tramped eight or ten miles through the deepest snow to keep an appointment with a beech-tree, or a yellow-birch, or an old acquaintance among the pines; when the ice and snow causing their limbs to droop, and so sharpening their tops, had changed the pines into fir-trees; wading to the tops of the highest hills when the snow was nearly two feet deep on a level, and shaking down another snow-storm on my head at every step; or sometimes creeping and floundering thither on my hands and knees, when the hunters had gone into winter quarters. ~Henry David Thoreau
Plants are the young of the world, vessels of health and vigor; but they grope ever upward towards consciousness; the trees are imperfect men, and seem to bemoan their imprisonment, rooted in the ground. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Nature"
It has been said that trees are imperfect men, and seem to bemoan their imprisonment rooted in the ground. But they never seem so to me. I never saw a discontented tree. They grip the ground as though they liked it, and though fast rooted they travel about as far as we do. They go wandering forth in all directions with every wind, going and coming like ourselves, traveling with us around the sun two million miles a day, and through space heaven knows how fast and far! ~John Muir, July 1890
I stood entirely alone within a large, dense forest of black spruces in northwestern Ontario. I smelled their essence, relaxed in their embrace, looked upon them as friends. ~R. D. Lawrence, The Green Trees Beyond: A Memoir, 1994
Here, at the Villa Usner, it is deliciously quiet and reposeful. I had not realised to the full how much nervous harm I've had for long. To live near trees is alone a joy and a restorative. ~William Sharp, 1905
Forest air is the epitome of healthy air... Every walk in the forest is like taking a shower in oxygen. ~Peter Wohlleben, The Hidden Life of Trees, 2015, translated from the German by Jane Billinghurst, 2016
Every string of nature's breezy harp is touched to answer thy sighs. The green oak and cedar—the dark pine, the yellow and silvery-barked willow—each majestic old tree; hath its own peculiar tone and whisper for thine ear. ~Elizabeth J. Eames, "An Autumn Reverie," October 1840
I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do. I feel as if this tree knows everything I ever think of when I sit here. When I come back to it, I never have to remind it of anything; I begin just where I left off. ~Willa Sibert Cather, O Pioneers!, 1913
'Whether is better the gift or the donor?
Come to me,'
Quoth the pine-tree,
'I am the giver of honor.
He is great who can live by me.
The rough and bearded forester
Is better than the lord...'
~Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Woodnotes, II"
The groves were God's first temples. ~William Cullen Bryant, "Forest Hymn"
Trees are your best antiques. ~Alexander Smith
Whoso walketh in solitude,
And inhabiteth the wood,
Choosing light, wave, rock, and bird,
Before the money-loving herd,
Into that forester shall pass,
From these companions, power and grace.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Woodnotes, II"
Clouds at noon occupying about half the sky gave half an hour of heavy rain to wash one of the cleanest landscapes in the world. How well it is washed!... How fresh the woods are and calm after the last films of clouds have been wiped from the sky! A few minutes ago every tree was excited, bowing to the roaring storm, waving, swirling, tossing their branches in glorious enthusiasm like worship. But though to the outer ear these trees are now silent, their songs never cease. Every hidden cell is throbbing with music and life, every fibre thrilling like harp strings, while incense is ever flowing from the balsam bells and leaves. No wonder the hills and groves were God's first temples, and the more they are cut down and hewn into cathedrals and churches, the farther off and dimmer seems the Lord himself. ~John Muir, 1869 July 24th
Here, age on age, the mighty wood
Drank deep the sun's exhaustless flood...
~Rev. James H. Ecob, "The Dreamer and Reaper," 1889
Down at the end of a winding path
Is a group of evergreen trees,
Pine and hemlock, and spruce and fir,
With their resinous fragrances;
And truest picture of calm content
That mortal ever saw...
~Elizabeth Anne Chase Akers Allen, "My Air–castle," The Sunset–song and other Verses, 1902
Once again the pine-tree sung:—
'Speak not thy speech my boughs among;
Put off thy years, wash in the breeze;
My hours are peaceful centuries...'
~Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Woodnotes, II"
It is difficult to realize how great a part of all that is cheerful and delightful in the recollections of our life is associated with trees. They are allied with the songs of morn, with the quiet of noonday, with social gatherings under the evening sky, and with the beauty and attractiveness of every season. Nowhere does nature look more lovely, or the sounds from birds and insects affect us more deeply, than under their benevolent shade. Never does the blue sky look more serene than when its dappled azure glimmers through their green trembling leaves. Their recesses... are still the favorite resorts of the studious... and the very sanctuary of peaceful seclusion for the contemplative and sorrowful. ~Wilson Flagg, "Relations of Trees to Poetry and Fable," The Woods and By-Ways of New England, 1872
Trees are the fairest ornaments of nature. ~Wilson Flagg
North and south and east and west
Grow blunt in beating that hill-crest.
All points of compass there may be,
Meet within that battered tree.
I need not wander very far
To learn where earth's four corners are
While I may read at dark and dawn
This winged and windy lexicon.
~Frances M. Frost, "Chart," Hemlock Wall, 1929
There are more life forms in a handful of forest soil than there are people on the planet. ~Peter Wohlleben, The Hidden Life of Trees, 2015, translated from the German by Jane Billinghurst, 2016
The wood is wiser far than thou... ~Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Woodnotes, II"
We all travel the milky way together, trees and men; but it never occurred to me until this storm-day, while swinging in the wind, that trees are travelers, in the ordinary sense. They make many journeys, not very extensive ones, it is true; but our own little comes and goes are only little more than tree-wavings—many of them not so much. ~John Muir, "A Wind Storm in the Forests of the Yuba," Scribner's Monthly, November 1878
Who leaves the pine-tree, leaves his friend,
Unnerves his strength, invites his end.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Woodnotes, II"
...it is an agreeable quality in pine-woods to be very much the same at any season of the year. They assume no sordid poverty in winter, no arrogant hopefulness in spring. An
The girl was very lovely. She smelled deliciously of pine needles. ~Maud Casey, The Man Who Walked Away, 2014
A word of grief to me erewhile:
We have cut the oak down, in our isle.
And I said: "Ye have bereaven
The song-thrush and the bee,
And the fisher-boy at sea
Of his sea-mark in the even;
And gourds of cooling shade, to lie
Within the sickle's sound;
And the old sheep-dog's loyal eye
Of sleep on duty's ground;
And poets of their tent
And quiet tenement.
Ah, impious! who so paid
Such fatherhood, and made
Of murmurous immortality a cargo and a trade."
For the hewn oak a century fair,
A wound in earth, an ache in air.
~Louise Imogen Guiney (1861–1920), "Arboricide"
But indeed, it is not so much for its beauty that the forest makes a claim upon men's hearts, as for that subtle something, that quality of the air, that emanation from the old trees, that so wonderfully changes and renews a weary spirit. ~Robert Louis Stevenson
There is something about a forest that compels introspection... ~Eloise J. Roorbach, "The Big Basin," Overland Monthly, October 1907
...the peace and quiet of the pine woods — and flavor of the breath of nature far away from the artificial contaminations... ~William Ellis, 1904
Mountains suggest pine-trees, the aboriginal, and let us hope, the never-to-be-exterminated dwellers upon their slopes... if ever our pine-forests are destroyed, the North will have lost the deepest intonation of its outdoor poetry. For the leaves of the pine are harp-strings played upon by the viewless presences of the air... ~Lucy Larcom
Except during the nine months before he draws his first breath, no man manages his affairs as well as a tree does. ~Bernard Shaw
Nothing visible but green depths fading into green depths, and fringing the
Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under the trees on a summer's day, listening to the murmur of water, or watching the clouds float across the blue sky, is by no means waste of time. ~John Lubbock, “Recreation,” The Use of Life, 1894
Sun out in the fields kin sizz,
But flat on yer back, I guess,
In the shade's where glory is!
~James Whitcomb Riley, "Knee-Deep in June"
In the springtime, leaves unfolding,
Growing, growing one by one,
In the summer, always giving
Cool, green shade to every one;
In the autumn, tall and stately,
Dressed in yellow, red and brown,
In the winter, sleeping, sleeping,
While the snow comes softly down...
~Charlotte Lay Dewey, "A Song of the Trees," in Kindergarten Review (Springfield, Mass.), October 1906
To avoid straining your eyes when you're continuously working, follow the
There dwells the very soul of quietness,
Seclusion's spirit deep within the green...
There every leaf is tongue to ancient breath,
Speech of the yesteryears forgathereth...
~Arthur Upson, "Wadham," Octaves in an Oxford Garden, 1902
"Who are you talking to?" I asked a child who was standing alone in the park. "The trees. They like it." ~Dr. SunWolf, professorsunwolf.com
When the pine tosses its cones...
To birds and trees he talks...
There the poet is at home.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Woodnotes, I"
The Professor from Prague University also taught me that the trees were an important part of the forest, but were not the entire system. I was at first quite surprised by this news, for until then I had believed, as many people still do, that the trees were, indeed, the entire forest. ~R. D. Lawrence, "The Sea and the Forest," The Green Trees Beyond: A Memoir, 1994
The spirits of the forest,
That to the winds give voice—
I lie the livelong April day
And wonder what it is they say
That makes the leaves rejoice...
~Madison Cawein, "Wood-Words"
A snowflake fell silent onto a red maple leaf, then another and another fell and joined it, until soon all the leaves on the ground were frosted with snow. A whisper of November wind shivered the leaves yet clinging to the chestnut tree. It rustled through the bare limbs, reminding, "It's time… It's time…" ~Ethel Pochocki (1925–2010), "Little-Good-for-Nothing," The Attic Mice, 1990 [a little altered
If I could stand in such a plain,
With such bright sap in every vein;
Could throw upon so blue an air,
Branches so light and strong and fair;
If I could sink my roots so deep
In darkness where the spirits creep...
Thou 'dst not more nobly stand and shine
Than I, proud Atlantean pine.
~Philip Henry Savage (1868–1899), "To a Pine-Tree," Poems, 1898
The cracked and hairy pineapple hide of an old palm tree growing next to the sidewalk captures Gordon's attention. He looks up, marveling at its longevity. His grandfather probably passed by that very tree fifty years ago. In its bird-spattered crown, Gordon hears a mourning dove's sorrowful burble blending with the dwindling patter of rain on this otherwise churchyard still day. ~Derek Swannson, Crash Gordon and the Mysteries of Kingsburg, 2007
You see the tree that sweeps my window-pane?
All the long winter-time it moans and grieves;
In the bleak nights I hear its boughs complain,
Praying for gracious sunshine and warm rain,
And its withheld inheritance of leaves.
But what avails it? Though the sad tree wears
Its heart out with its grief, what shall it gain?
Do you believe the tardy summer cares
For all its wild rebukes and passionate prayers,
Or that the sun shines warmer for its pain?
~Elizabeth Chase Akers Allen (1832–1911), "Time," c.1866
Year on year
The lovely trees have grown more dear.
~V. O. Wallingford (b.1876), "The Cottonwood Trees"
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot
They took all the trees
Put 'em in a tree museum
And they charged the people
A dollar and a half just to see 'em
Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got
'Til it's gone...
~Joni Mitchell, from “Big Yellow Taxi,” lyrics written circa
The pine-tree's plumy branches make a net
And hold the light of heaven...
~Philip Henry Savage (1868–1899)
The trees are whispering to me, reminding me of my roots, and my reach... shhhhhh... can you hear them? Selflessly sharing their subtle song. ~Jeb Dickerson, @JebDickerson
The rope-like pine roots crosswise grown
Composed the network of his throne;
The wide lake, edged with sand and grass,
Was burnished to a floor of glass,
Painted with shadows green and proud
Of the tree and of the cloud.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Woodnotes, I" [I've seen this Bob Ross painting!
By June all the pinks and faint lilacs of infant leaves have gone and the woodland is unbroken green. But not all the same green, by any means. I still can spot the pines and the hemlocks from down here in the valley. I can pick out the aspens, partly by color, partly by the twinkle of those fluttery leaves. I know how dark is the green of the white oak leaf, how bright the green of the sugar maple, how yellow the poplar leaf can look in certain light. The woodland wears a Joseph's-coat, but all its colors are green. ~Hal Borland, "The Green, Green World," A Countryman's Woods, 1983
Yes! Winter is coming, for autumn is here. And how can you keep it a secret, when those tattle-tale aspen are about? ~Raymond Carlson, Arizona Highways, October 1946, arizonahighways.com
The best part of happiness is the pines. ~Terri Guillemets
I who have loved the sound of leaves
Restlessly writhing into speech
Desire that to my silent grave
Only leaves shall reach.
So I who walked above the ground,
And leaves that danced before the sun
May meet below to form one dust
And in the earth be one.
When the last wind has stripped the boughs
Some autumn, go out anywhere
To any tree, and look beneath
The leaves: I may be there.
~Paul Engle, "Leaves for the Dead," c.1929
...is it not kin of the human family with its roots in the earth and its arms stretching toward the sky as if to seek and to know the great mystery? ~Art Young (1866–1943)
In the storm, like a prophet o'ermaddened,
Thou singest and tossest thy branches;
Thy heart with the terror is gladdened,
Thou forebodest the dread avalanches....
In the calm thou o'erstretchest the valleys
With thine arms, as if blessings imploring,
Like an old king led forth from his palace,
When his people to battle are pouring...
~James Russell Lowell, “To A Pine-Tree”
We can learn a lot from trees: they're always grounded but never stop reaching heavenward. ~Terri Guillemets, "Humans & nature," 2002
Between every two pine trees there is a door leading to a new way of life. ~John Muir [For quite some time I wasn't sure if this was an actual Muir quotation, but fortunately Dan Styer has worked hard to track it down. Read about it here: oberlin.edu/physics/dstyer/Muir/QuotableJohnMuir.html. Thanks, Dan!
It's so wonderful here — this great, white stillness, and those dark trees that seem to be thinking. ~L. M. Montgomery, Anne of the Island, 1915
Once glistering green,
With dewy sheen,
And summer glory round them cast:
Now black and bare,
The trees stand there,
And mourn their beauty that it past.
Look, leaf by leaf,
Each leaf a grief.
The hand of Autumn strips them bare.
No sound nor cry,
As they fall and die,
Because they know that Life is there.
So stiff and strong,
The winter long,
All uncomplaining stand the trees.
God make my life,
Through all its strife,
As true to Spring as one of these.
So would I stand,
Serene and grand,
While age strips off the joys of youth;
Because I know
That, as they go,
My soul draws nearer to the Truth.
~G. A. Studdert Kennedy, "Trees," The Sorrows of God and Other Poems, 1924
Leaves do miraculous things. ~Hal Borland, "The Green, Green World," A Countryman's Woods, 1983
So, in the case of trees, being old doesn't mean being weak, bowed, and fragile. Quite the opposite, it means being full of energy and highly productive. This means elders are markedly more productive than young whippersnappers, and when it comes to climate change, they are important allies for human beings. ~Peter Wohlleben, The Hidden Life of Trees, 2015, translated from the German by Jane Billinghurst, 2016
But these trees are derelicts—throwing out a wisp of foliage here and there, a truce to death, with each returning spring. ~Julia Ellen Rogers, “The Big Tree and the Redwood,” The Tree Book: A Popular Guide to a Knowledge of the Trees of North America and to their Uses and Cultivation, 1905
Wind tries to show Tree how to run wild.
Tree: "I cannot leave this place."
Wind: "Then let's dance."
~Terri Guillemets
I hugged a tree today — the weeping willow looked like it really needed one. ~Patrick McDonnell, "Shtinky's Dear Diary," Mutts, @muttscomics, Instagram post, 2020
Trees are the kindest things I know,
They do no harm, they simply grow...
~Harry Behn, "Trees," The Little Hill, 1949
It is well that you should celebrate your Arbor Day thoughtfully, for within your lifetime the Nation’s need of trees will become serious. We of an older generation can get along with what we have, though with growing hardship; but in your full manhood and womanhood you will want what nature once so bountifully supplied and man so thoughtlessly destroyed; and because of that want you will reproach us, not for what we have used, but for what we have wasted...
A people without children would face a hopeless future; a country without trees is almost as hopeless; forests which are so used that they can not renew themselves will soon vanish, and with them all their benefits. A true forest is not merely a storehouse full of wood, but, as it were, a factory of wood, and at the same time a reservoir of water. When you help to preserve our forests or to plant new ones you are acting the part of good citizens. The value of forestry deserves, therefore, to be taught in the schools, which aim to make good citizens of you. If your Arbor Day exercises help you to realize what benefits each one of you receives from the forests, and how by your assistance these benefits may continue, they will serve a good end. ~Theodore Roosevelt, to the school children of the United States, 1907
I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth's sweet flowing breast;
A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A tree that may in Summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;
Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.
~Joyce Kilmer, "Trees," 1914
I think that I shall never see
A billboard lovely as a tree.
Indeed, unless the billboards fall
I'll never see a tree at all.
~Ogden Nash (1902–1971), "Song of the Open Road"
I think that I shall never see
A sight more festive than a tree…
A tree just full of Christmas cheer
At this most happy time of year...
~William Arthur Ward (1921–1994), "The Christmas Tree"
That a slender wooden tree twig can give birth to luscious pears, apples, peaches remains an extraordinary feat. ~Dr. SunWolf, 2012 January 17th tweet, professorsunwolf.com
Too bad you can't just grab a tree by the very tiptop and bend it clear over the ground and then let her fly, because I bet you'd be amazed at all the stuff that comes flying out. ~Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts, 1992, deepthoughtsbyjackhandey.com
A palo verde
is sunlit laughter
when Spring walks
desert ways;
A pepper tree is
a lace mantilla
through which the
moonlight plays…
The eucalyptus
has gypsy breeding
that laughs at wind and rain;
Gnarled sycamores sing
where canyons are deep,
a peace-filled, calm refrain…
But high on mountains,
the pines stand praying,
their voices whisper low
as they chant together
an ageless measure,
"Reach out and up, and grow!"
~Lorraine Babbitt, "Tree Portraits," in Arizona Highways, September 1961, arizonahighways.com
...the moonlight cast arborescent shadows on the snow... ~R. D. Lawrence (1921–2003), The North Runner, 1979
Through leafy windows of the trees
The full moon shows a wrinkled face,
And, trailing dim her draperies
Of mist from place to place,
The Twilight leads the breeze.
~Madison Cawein, "Minions of the Moon"
The ash trees grow crimson in color, and lose their summer life in great gouts of blood. The birches touch their frail spray with yellow; the chestnuts drop down their leaves in brown, twirling showers. The beeches crimped with the frost, guard their foliage, until each leaf whistles white, in the November gales. The bitter-sweet hangs its bare, and leaf-less tendrils from rock to tree, and swaps with the weight of its brazen berries. The sturdy oaks, unyielding to the winds, and to the frosts, struggle long against the approaches of the winter; and in their struggles, wear faces of orange, of scarlet, of crimson, and of brown; and finally, yielding to swift winds, — as youth's pride yields to manly duty, — strew the ground with the scattered glories of their summer strength; and warm, and feed the earth, with the debris of their leafy honors.
...the ailanthus, with all its greenness gone, — lifts up its skeleton fingers to the God of Autumn and of storms, — the dog-wood still guards its crown; and the branches which stretched their white canvas in April now bear up a spire of bloody tongues, that lie against the leafless woods, like a tree on fire.
The Druidoak, deepgnarled and bent
Lifts up his arms on high:
We raise our hands with good intent
But still we grow awry.
~George Norton Northrop, "Prayer," Poems by Arthur Upson & George Norton Northrop, 1902
All freezes again —
among the pines, winds whispering
a prayer.
~Riei, 1794, in Yoel Hoffmann, Japanese Death Poems: Written by Zen Monks and Haiku Poets on the Verge of Death, 1986
On windy fall days, the rustling of the leaves seems almost musical... These sounds of wind in the trees and the rustling of leaves have enchanted so many people over time that they invented a word to describe them: psithurism (pronounced
Let me, oh, let me lay my weary head to rest,
When the golden days of my life are o'er,
When the merry waves of the river of life subside,
Then let me lay my weary head to rest
On the rock which in days gone by
Was my throne while I learned the secrets of the woods.
Let me lie beneath the azure skies
Under the shelter of all the loving trees
While they whisper tales of long ago.
~Julia Cooley Altrocchi (1893–1972), "The Silent Wood," 1903, The Poems of a Child, Being Poems Written Between the Ages of Six and Ten, 1904
The great-heart wind, that bids us share
The optimism of the trees.
~Madison Cawein, "Wood-Words"
Coming near you one hears the tune of time
Droning through your drapery, telling of
Long living on Western slopes, your myriad
Toes clawed deep in the broad breasts and lean loins
Of mountains, your towering trunks keeping
Records of climatic variations
Through centuries of quiet, requiting growth.
At your feet you cast your opening cones
And feather the land with your wondrous forms.
~Cave Outlaw (1900–1996), "Conifers," Autumn Walk, 1974
I passed by the pitch pine that was struck by lightning, and was impressed with awe on looking up and seeing that broad, distinct, spiral mark, more distinct even than when made eight years ago, as one might groove a walking stick,… mark where a terrific and resistless bolt came down from heaven, out of the harmless sky. It seemed a sacred spot. ~Henry David Thoreau, journal, 1853 December 26th [a little altered
I shall not need a forest to
Complete my happiness,
When I shall build at last for peace
And days grow less.
Oh, I have loved the thick green woods
Peopled with sentinels,
Full lipped in spring, breasted in snow—
Leaf songs—wind bells—
But I shall be content if I
May have one tree, just one
Before my door, companioning me
At set of sun.
Each leafy melody will mean
The more in solo strain,
Each dripping bough, the lovelier lute
After the rain.
One tree—just one, will satisfy
When I can no more go,
To hold communion with the hosts
Of trees I know.
~George Elliston, "One Tree," Through Many Windows, 1924
...the perfume of the wilderness, the aroma of the balsams, the sweet scent of honeysuckle, and the more robust, medicinal tang of the balm poplars... the fragrances of spring... and soft, clean air... ~R. D. Lawrence (1921–2003), The North Runner, 1979
The roads shall not be vacant of my feet
This windy morning underneath this sky
That flows like some old river over me...
The trees that walked before me in the fields
And stand like ladies now with blowing hair,
I shall have words for them this April day—
Two words of silence lost into a prayer.
~Marshall Schacht, "Excursions," 1920s
The wood's green heart is a nest of dreams... ~William Ernest Henley (1849–1903), "Ballade of Midsummer Days and Nights"
The orchard, near the meadow deep,
Lifts up decrepit arms,
Black-lichened in a withering heap.
No sap swells up to make it leap
And shout against spring's storms;
No blossom lulls its age asleep;
The winds bring sad alarms.
Big, bell-round pears and pippins, russet-red,
No maiden gathers now;
The worm-bored trunks weep tears of gum instead,
Oozing from each old bough.
~Madison J. Cawein (1865–1914), "The Haunted House"
The forest was no longer obscured in darkness. The great trees had emerged, and only the dusk of twilight was left between. He saw them plainly — their symmetrical forms, their declining limbs, their tall tops piercing the sky. He saw them as they were, — those ancient, eternal symbols and watchmen of the wilderness. ~Edison Marshall, The Strength of the Pines, 1921
I knew how the trees would change, the air grow misted and chill;
I felt the gold twilight under the trees, the smell of earth-mould and crushed acorns,
and last of all, I knew, the leaves of the fig-tree would turn gold and fall slowly, one by one,
(always the falling of the fig-leaves is heavy with infinite melancholy—)
then one day a great gale would come thundering through the trees,
strip the last leaves from the poplars, and leave the landscape bare.
~Dallas Kenmare Browne Kelsey (c.1905–1970)
Like baroque pearls,
Like cloudy emeralds,
The clouds and the trees clash together;
Whirling and swirling,
In the tumult
Of the spring,
And the wind.
~John Gould Fletcher, "Green Symphony"
Climates are healthy to man so long as the forests in and around them remain, but become very insalubrious when the woods are felled. ~George P. Marsh, Man and Nature; or, Physical Geography as Modified by Human Action, 1864
Not at home to callers
Says the naked tree –
Jacket due in April.
Wishing you good day.
~Emily Dickinson
Gilbert and Anne... were sauntering through the shadows of the Haunted Wood. Beyond, the harvest hills were basking in an amber sunset radiance, under a pale, aerial sky of rose and blue. The distant spruce groves were burnished bronze, and their long shadows barred the upland meadows. But around them a little wind sang among the fir tassels, and in it there was the note of autumn. ~L. M. Montgomery, Anne of the Island, 1915
A thought of the trees as being so beautiful that they were banished from the kingdom of greenness.
The stately boughs
Of banished kings.
~Julia Cooley Altrocchi (1893–1972), "Sentences That I Make Up," The Poems of a Child, Being Poems Written Between the Ages of Six and Ten, 1904
The parlour is tiny and neat. Its one window is so shaded by a huge willow that the room has a grotto-like effect of emerald gloom. ~L. M. Montgomery, Anne of the Island, 1915
When the moonlight strikes the tree-tops,
The trees are not the same.
I know they are not the same,
Because there is one tree that is missing,
And it stood so long by another,
That the other, feeling lonely,
Now is slowly dying too...
~John Gould Fletcher, "The Ghosts of an Old House"
The forest was a sleek, well-tended wild garden relaxing in the sun after a long, hard winter. ~R. D. Lawrence (1921–2003), The North Runner, 1979
Far let the voices of the mad wild birds be calling me,
I will abide in this forest of pines.
~John Gould Fletcher, "Green Symphony"
...Long, sparkling aisles of steel-stemmed trees
Bending to counterfeit a breeze...
~James Russell Lowell
There is something spiritual about being with old trees. It is self-transcending. ~Wally Covington, Northern Arizona University forestry professor, as quoted by Annette McGivney, "The Grandmother of All Ponderosas," in Arizona Highways, June 2022, annettemcgivney.com, arizonahighways.com
Against the tree I lean my cheek
And as I stand and do not speak
I think the heart that throbs in me
Is underneath the bark, its beat
Fills my cold face with sudden heat;
The sap that comes from rain and sun
To fill the tree and make it live
Is in my veins, I feel it run
Through hands and temples radiantly;
And like the tree I lean upon
I too am a tree!
I raise my head and see
The world, and it is sweet,
And sunny to my feet
And green, and rustling. High
I lift my arms! The sky
Is just beyond my reach!
I understand the speech
Of squirrel and weed and stone.
When I am grown
A little taller still
I shall see past the hill
To where the great world ends.
The keen winds are my friends,
And God, too, and the grass...
~Mary Carolyn Davies, "Spring Day," Youth Riding, 1919
Winter strips the broad-leafed trees to their essentials. Now they stand in bare bones, all of them except the pines and spruces and hemlocks, and you can see what stands behind their graceful summer shapes. ~Hal Borland, "Silhouettes and Fingerprints," A Countryman's Woods, 1983
...i picked up a leaf, mottled with brown and yellow,
its veins like a feather's.
its lines were so delicate and precise...
~Ken Sekaquaptewa and Candy St. Jacques, Sahuaro, 1970, yearbook of the Associated Students of Arizona State University
The bark of the banished trees is clawed and scratched by furry apple-thieves, and the boughs bent and broken so that they fall about your shoulders if you stand under them. Apple-trees like to cuddle, and it must soothe their loneliness to have a woman's hand touch their torn and wounded skin, and a woman's eyes look up into their green souls. ~Margaret Troili, “Woods of Mendocino,” Out West: A Magazine of the Old Pacific and the New, June 1908
[T]he bees will buzz you a welcome from the hives at the end, and then the trees will stoop down about you, and you can look up into a green sky set with constellations of apples. ~Margaret Troili, “Woods of Mendocino,” Out West: A Magazine of the Old Pacific and the New, June 1908
I passed through trees. Inside their wooden samurai armor they are geisha beauties, each one a 'person-of-the-art,' limbs dancing, arranging flowers, carrying the wind's music, the calligraphy of their roots pure poetry, rhyming earth and berth. ~A.A. Attanasio, "Fractal Blood Soul," 2007
Standing in silent starlight,
the wind carries a crimson leaf to my feet.
Love letter from a nearby tree.
~Dr. SunWolf, professorsunwolf.com
Trees...
They are the first when day's begun
To touch the beams of morning sun,
They are the last to hold the light
When evening changes into night...
~Harry Behn, "Trees," The Little Hill, 1949
And it is an all-leaf woodland now... Leaves, no two precisely alike even on a single tree, and countless shapes in the woodland: The heart-shaped leaf of the cottonwood, the lance-head leaf of the beech. The scalloped leaves of the oaks, the sawtoothed leaves of elm and chinkapin and hornbeam. The three-lobed, five-lobed, unforgettable leaves of the maples; the mitten leaves of the sassafras, impartially left- or right-handed. The leaflets on a common stem, adding up to an ash leaf, a locust, a hickory, a walnut, a mountain-ash, a staghorn sumac full of fire for September. ~Hal Borland, "The Green, Green World," A Countryman's Woods, 1983
I dreamed adown the silence of a pinewood...
A piny avenue
Be-misted
With a distance all indefinite
All fogged with dew
That kissed it...
~D.C.L.D., "A Dream," Castalian Splashes, 1916
I don't know that a graveyard is a very good place to go to get cheered up, but it seems the only
No language can give an idea of the beauty and glory of the trees, just at this moment. It would be easy, by a process of word-daubing, to set down a confused group of gorgeous colors, like a bunch of tangled skeins of bright silk; but there is nothing of the reality in the glare which would thus be produced. ~Nathaniel Hawthorne
Little leaves that dance so softly,
Dance so gaily, dance so lightly
In the sun and in the moon,
Move so tenderly and whitely.
Do you quiver to a music
Ever singing, ever sighing
To a measure I can never
Hear in living, heed in dying?
Where is it—this fairy beauty,
What is it—this gentle strain,
Waking you fantastically
To old whispering in new rain?
There must be a singing somewhere,
Unheard orchestras in tune,
Else you would not sway and tremble
In the sun and in the moon.
~George Elliston, "Guess," Bright World, 1927
I cannot find it in my heart to fell a tree, and have left standing every tree in the avenue of beeches and chestnuts... ~Coulson Kernahan, Begging the Moon's Pardon, 1930
Finland is officially the world’s happiest country. It is also 75
Exhalation of moss, mycelium, black mould; wafted savor of a thousand earthly growths, damp, clinging, redolent; aroma of mighty roots, of invisible spawn and seed—all the vast stirring of the earth's desire. ~Virginia Garland, “The Rain,” Out West: A Magazine of the Old Pacific and the New, February 1908
Anne was sitting on the big gray boulder in the orchard looking at the poem of a bare, birchen bough hanging against the pale red sunset with the very perfection of grace. ~L. M. Montgomery, Anne of the Island, 1915
As the spring comes on, and the densening outlines of the elm give daily a new design for a Grecian urn, — its hue, first brown with blossoms, then emerald with leaves, — we appreciate the vanishing beauty of the bare boughs. In our favored temperate zone, the trees denude themselves each year, like the goddesses before Paris, that we may see which unadorned loveliness is the fairest. ~Thomas Wentworth Higginson, "April Days," 1861
The soft light wrought strange miracles in the forest: bathing the tree tops in silver, laying wonderful cobweb tapestries between the trunks, upsetting the whole perspective as to distance and contour. ~Edison Marshall, The Strength of the Pines, 1921
Adapt yourself to change as the willow tree adapts itself to the weather. When the harsh winds of circumstance sweep across the landscape of your life, bow gracefully, bend gently, adapt graciously.
You are wise to study well the ways of the willow. In the face of change, in the throes of adversity, in the midst of conflict and crisis, the willow willingly bends its branches, but refuses to release its roots. ~William Arthur Ward, "The Wisdom of Adapting Yourself"
Farther down the mountain the spruce grow full and strong, but the bristlecone pine grow only here at timberline and in a few scattered groves downslope where conditions approximate those at the heights. Ice-grained winter winds have scoured them of bark and twisted their burly trunks like hawsers. Their frayed and brambled limbs, upstretched in frozen homage to the sky, have been foreshortened by centuries of brief summers. Their roots press with sullen desperation into the shivered stone, and by the looks of them they have only the most tenuous grip on life. Yet the bristlecone pine is the oldest living thing on earth. ~David W. Toll, "Bristlecone to Saguaro: The Story of Arizona's Trees and Forests from Timberline to Desert Floor," Arizona Highways, January 1971, arizonahighways.com
In fact, there's nothing that keeps its youth,
So far as I know, but a tree and truth.
(This is a moral that runs at large;
Take it. — You're welcome. — No extra charge.)
~Oliver Wendell Holmes, "The Deacon's Masterpiece (or The Wonderful "One-Hoss-Shay"): A Logical Story"
Pines!... those tall, dark trees that symbolize, above all other trees, the wilderness. ~Edison Marshall, The Strength of the Pines, 1921
[They] lived in an enchanting forest lodge... the deodar forest rose up protectively on three sides of it, dwarfing and sheltering it, while its front windows faced the level sweep of the valley with its orchards and walnut groves and the forests that swept up again on the far side. The air smelled deliciously of pine-needles, herbs and woodsmoke, of the little yellow climbing roses that grow wild in the Himalayas... ~M. M. Kaye, Golden Afternoon, 1997
Four old trees stand tall on a hill.
Wind swirls around them, never still...
The wood was so old that I thought
I'd hear it saying its prayers...
~Glenn Ward Dresbach, "Songs of the Plains," c.1921
Only yonder magnificent pine-tree... holds her unchanging beauty throughout the year, like her half-brother, the ocean, whose voice she shares; and only marks the flowing of her annual tide of life by the new verdure that yearly submerges all trace of last year's ebb. ~Thomas Wentworth Higginson, "April Days," 1861
You can't be suspicious of a tree, or accuse a bird or a squirrel of subversion of challenge the ideology of a violet. ~Hal Borland, "Spring Is for Laughter," 1954
Shafts of golden light darted far beneath the high arched walks of the forest, bathing the trunks of the giant tree with orange and yellow glows. ~Val Hardacre, Woodland Nuggets of Gold, 1968
The beauty of the forest is extraordinary — but ‘beauty' is too simple a word, for being here is not just an aesthetic experience, but one steeped with mystery, with awe.... My father once told me that the very word ‘paradise' meant garden.... But gardens, Eden or Kew, are not the right metaphors here, for the primeval has nothing to do with the human, but has to do with the ancient, the aboriginal, the beginning of all things. The primeval, the sublime, are much better words here — for they indicate realms remote from the moral or the human, realms which force us to gaze into immense vistas of space and time, where the beginnings and originations of all things lie hidden. Now, as I wandered in the cycad forest on Rota, it seemed as if my senses were actually enlarging, as if a new sense, a time sense, was opening within me, something which might allow me to appreciate millennia or aeons as directly as I had experienced seconds or minutes.... Standing here in the jungle, I feel part of a larger, calmer identity; I feel a profound sense of being at home, a sort of companionship with the earth. ~Oliver Sacks, The Island of the Colour-blind and Cycad Island, 1996 (Thanks, Dan!)
It seems natural to liken venerable trees to grand old men. It is something to have lived through storms that try one so terribly, but only succeed in giving greater powers. Even the scars of a tree add dignity, and the loss here and there of a limb only makes for more character... ~Eloise J. Roorbach, "The Big Basin," Overland Monthly, October 1907
moonlit winter trees
bare branches paint gray shadows
ghostly risen roots
~Terri Guillemets, "Doppelgänger," 2022
Of the living gymnosperms the conifers — pine, cedar, spruce, fir and redwood trees — are the most successful biologically. The needle-like leaves of these evergreens are well adapted to withstand hot summers, cold winters and the mechanical abrasion of storms. ~Claude Alvin Villee, Jr., Biology, 1954
I sensed that while I would never be able to prevent the return of my war demons entirely, I would henceforth be able to subjugate them by immersing myself, not symbolically but in fact, in the reality of the green trees... ~R. D. Lawrence, The Green Trees Beyond: A Memoir, 1994
An ancient maple-tree, a strong sweet tree
That has made wild music from the wind and snow
For ninety winters; a maple-tree whose arms,
Stretching against the rain, the bouncing hail,
Has sheltered multitudes of travellers
And straggling hosts of elders, wayworn, palsied,
And weary with the day,—for ninety summers.
~Lew Sarett
A maple that has yielded up its life
Season on sugar-season—oh, what can be
More tragic in its beauty than a maple:
Swollen and scarred of trunk, and varicose
From gashes in the bark, from too many wounds
Of too many spiles that let out too much sap,
From too much giving, giving for ninety years,
For ninety Moons-of-Maple-Sugar-Making,
For ninety Moons-of-Gathering-of-Wild-Rice,
For ninety Moons-of-the-Falling-of-the-Leaves,
For ninety Moons-of-the-Coming-of-the-Snow.
~Lew Sarett
We all know how good being in nature can make us feel. We have known it for millennia. The sounds of the forest, the scent of the trees, the sunlight playing through the leaves, the fresh, clean air — these things give us a sense of comfort. They ease our stress and worry, help us to relax and to think more clearly. Being in nature can restore our mood, give us back our energy and vitality, refresh and rejuvenate us...
We are practising what we in Japan call forest-bathing, or
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published 1998 Mar 18
revised 2021 Mar 12
last saved 2024 Dec 3
www.quotegarden.com/trees.html