The pine, placed nearly always among scenes disordered and desolate, bring into them all possible elements of order and precision. Lowland trees may lean to this side and that, though it is but a meadow breeze that bends them or a bank of cowlips from which their trunks lean aslope.
But let storm and avalanche do their worst, and let the pine find only a ledge of vertical precipice to cling to, it will nevertheless grow straight. Thrust a rod from its last shoot down the stem; it shall point to the center of the earth as long as the tree lives.
It may be well also for lowland branches to reach hither and thither for what they need, and to take all kinds of irregular shape and extension. But the pine is trained to need nothing and endure everything. It is resolvedly whole, self-contained, desiring nothing but rightness, content with restricted completion. Tall or short, it will be straight.
The early snows fall soft and white and seem to heal the landscape. There are as yet no tracks through the drifts, no muddied slush in the roads. The wind sweeps snow into the scars of our harvest-time haste, smoothing the brow of hill, hiding furrow and cog and trash in the yard.
Snow muffles the shriek of metal and the rasp of motion. It covers our flintier purposes and brings a redeeming silence, as if a curtain has fallen on the strivings of a year, and now we may stop, look inward, and rediscover the amber warmth of family and conversation.
At such times, locked away inside wall and woolen, lulled by the sedatives of wood-smoke and candlelight, we recall the competing claims of nature. We see the branch and bark of trees, rather than the sugar-scented green of their leaves. We look out the window and admire the elegance of ice crystal, the bravely patient tree leaning leafless into the wind, the dramatic shadows of the stooping sun. We look at the structure of things, the geometry of branch and snowflake, family and deed. Even before the first snow, we view the world differently in winter.
We watch the lawn settle into the sleep of frost and the last crumpled leaf quiver on the oak, and feel the change. At night the skies are cold and clear, and stars shine like the dreams of serpents. The hillsides turn brown and gray; the edges of stalk and blade stand out starkly.
Dark clouds settle on the mountain ridges. Storms rumble in like freight trains. Rain rattles the roof and thutters at the window. Then comes the snow, and we once again wonder at how it transforms the familiar objects of our everyday world. When snowflake drifts the road we head indoors and resign ourselves to the quiet crackle of the wood fire. The example of the woodpile and the well-stocked larder tells us that we can achieve what we dream, and winter brings us long, silent nights to dream on.
Human thought is not a firework, ever shooting off fresh forms and shapes as it burns; it is a tree, growing very slowly—you can watch it long and see no movement —very silently, unnoticed. It was planted in the world many thousand years ago, a tiny, sickly plant.
And men guarded it and tended it, and gave up life and fame to aid its growth. In the hot days of their youth, they came to the gate of the garden and knocked, begging to be let in, and to be counted among the gardeners. And their young companions outside called to them to come back, and play the man with bow and spear, and win sweet smiles from rosy lips, and take their part amid the feast, and dance, not stoop with wrinkled brows, at weaklings' work.
And the passers by mocked them and called shame, and others cried out to stone them. And still they stayed there laboring, that the tree might grow a little, and they died and were forgotten. And the tree grew fair and strong.
The storms of ignorance passed over it, and harmed it not. The fierce fires of superstition soared around it; but men leaped into the flames and beat them back, perishing, and the tree grew. With the sweat of their brow men have nourished its green leaves.
Their tears have moistened the earth about it. With their blood they have watered its roots. The seasons have come and passed, and the tree has grown and flourished. And its branches have spread far and high, and ever fresh shoots are bursting forth, and ever new leaves unfolding to the light. But they are all part of the one tree—the tree that was planted on the first birthday of the human race. The stem that bears them springs from the gnarled old trunk that was green and soft when white-haired Time was a little child; the sap that feeds them is drawn up through the roots.
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