| |
| COME, let us plant the apple-tree. | |
| Cleave the tough greensward with the spade; | |
| Wide let its hollow bed be made; | |
| There gently lay the roots, and there | |
| Sift the dark mould with kindly care, | 5 |
| And press it o’er them tenderly, | |
| As round the sleeping infant’s feet | |
| We softly fold the cradle-sheet; | |
| So plant we the apple-tree. | |
| |
| What plant we in this apple-tree? | 10 |
| Buds, which the breath of summer days | |
| Shall lengthen into leafy sprays; | |
| Boughs where the thrush with crimson breast | |
| Shall haunt, and sing, and hide her nest; | |
| We plant, upon the sunny lea, | 15 |
| A shadow for the noontide hour, | |
| A shelter from the summer shower, | |
| When we plant the apple-tree. | |
| |
| What plant we in this apple-tree? | |
| Sweets for a hundred flowery springs | 20 |
| To load the May-wind’s restless wings, | |
| When, from the orchard row, he pours | |
| Its fragrance through our open doors; | |
| A world of blossoms for the bee, | |
| Flowers for the sick girl’s silent room, | 25 |
| For the glad infant sprigs of bloom, | |
| We plant with the apple-tree. | |
| |
| What plant we in this apple-tree! | |
| Fruits that shall swell in sunny June, | |
| And redden in the August noon, | 30 |
| And drop, when gentle airs come by, | |
| That fan the blue September sky, | |
| While children come, with cries of glee, | |
| And seek them where the fragrant grass | |
| Betrays their bed to those who pass, | 35 |
| At the foot of the apple-tree. | |
| |
| And when, above this apple-tree, | |
| The winter stars are quivering bright, | |
| And winds go howling through the night, | |
| Girls, whose young eyes o’erflow with mirth, | 40 |
| Shall peel its fruit by cottage hearth, | |
| And guests in prouder homes shall see, | |
| Heaped with the grape of Cintra’s vine | |
| And golden orange of the Line, | |
| The fruit of the apple-tree. | 45 |
| |
| The fruitage of this apple-tree | |
| Winds and our flag of stripe and star | |
| Shall bear to coasts that lie afar, | |
| Where men shall wonder at the view, | |
| And ask in what fair groves they grew; | 50 |
| And sojourners beyond the sea | |
| Shall think of childhood’s careless day | |
| And long, long hours of summer play, | |
| In the shade of the apple-tree. | |
| |
| Each year shall give this apple-tree | 55 |
| A broader flush of roseate bloom, | |
| A deeper maze of verdurous gloom, | |
| And loosen, when the frost-clouds lower, | |
| The crisp brown leaves in thicker shower, | |
| The years shall come and pass, but we | 60 |
| Shall hear no longer, where we lie, | |
| The summer’s songs, the autumn’s sigh, | |
| In the boughs of the apple-tree. | |
| |
| And time shall waste this apple-tree. | |
| O, when its agèd branches throw | 65 |
| Thin shadows on the ground below, | |
| Shall fraud and force and iron will | |
| Oppress the weak and helpless still? | |
| What shall the tasks of mercy be, | |
| Amid the toils, the strifes, the tears | 70 |
| Of those who live when length of years | |
| Is wasting this apple-tree? | |
| |
| “Who planted this old apple-tree?” | |
| The children of that distant day | |
| Thus to some agèd man shall say; | 75 |
| And, gazing on its mossy stem, | |
| The gray-haired man shall answer them: | |
| “A poet of the land was he, | |
| Born in the rude but good old times; | |
| ’T is said he made some quaint old rhymes | 80 |
| On planting the apple-tree.” | |
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