Trees Need Not Walk the Earth by David Rosenthal. William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. 1920. Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1920

William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. (1878–1962). Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1920. 1920.

Trees Need Not Walk the Earth

David Rosenthal


TREES need not walk the earth
For beauty or for bread;
Beauty will come to them
Where they stand.
Here among the children of the sap	5
Is no pride of ancestry:
A birch may wear no less the morning
Than an oak.
Here are no heirlooms
Save those of loveliness,	10
In which each tree
Is kingly in its heritage of grace.
Here is but beauty’s wisdom
In which all trees are wise.
Trees need not walk the earth	15
For beauty or for bread;
Beauty will come to them
In the rainbow—
The sunlight—
And the lilac-haunted rain;	20
And bread will come to them
As beauty came:
In the rainbow—
In the sunlight—
In the rain. The Nation	25