. .
The lone gift of the forest is ever new:
Eternity where dwell not you.
The forest, accepting, heeds you not;
Accepting all-you are forgot.
If there be leaves on the forest floor,
Dead leaves there are and nothing more.
Once the forest spoke but now is silent,
Save in the skyward branches whence no sound
Seems to touch ear of any man below--
Or else no longer the man knows how to hear.
Such men build roofs to keep the forest out,
Yet all their roofs are built of the forest's self;
Only they make the dead tree a shield against the
living.
Such lapsing of the forest then they use
And turn it into countless lowly dwellings;
Sometimes they even cut the living down
To leaven the dead roofs they would erect.
Though some of these low roofs are lovely there
Beneath the guardianship of forest trees,
And some yearn upward as with thought of wings,
Yet the eyes of the dwellers therein are dark
To the upper forest and they
Fearful of the windy freedom of its top.
They have forgotten
That the greatest roof is but a banner
And that it was a tree that made a Cross.
CHARLES R. MURPHY
MAGIC
TO W.S.B.
I RAN into the sunset light
As hard as I could run:
The treetops bowed in sheer delight
As if they loved the sun:
And all the songs of little birds
Who laughed and cried in silver words
Were joined as they were one.
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