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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 oer them tenderly, | |
As round the sleeping infants feet | |
We softly fold the cradle-sheet; | |
So plant we the apple-tree. | |
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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. | |
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What plant we in this apple-tree? | |
Sweets for a hundred flowery springs | 20 |
To load the May-winds 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 girls silent room, | 25 |
For the glad infant sprigs of bloom, | |
We plant with the apple-tree. | |
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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. | |
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And when, above this apple-tree, | |
The winter stars are quivering bright, | |
And winds go howling through the night, | |
Girls, whose young eyes oerflow with mirth, | 40 |
Shall peel its fruit by cottage hearth, | |
And guests in prouder homes shall see, | |
Heaped with the grape of Cintras vine | |
And golden orange of the Line, | |
The fruit of the apple-tree. | 45 |
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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 childhoods careless day | |
And long, long hours of summer play, | |
In the shade of the apple-tree. | |
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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 summers songs, the autumns sigh, | |
In the boughs of the apple-tree. | |
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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? | |
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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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