#WingedWordsWindsday: 2023/04/26 -- Treelore: Ageless & Evergreen

 WINGED WORDS WINDSDAY

Compiled & Edited by Rob Chappell (@RHCLambengolmo)

Vol. 2, No. 26: April 26, 2023

 

 

Treelore in Prose and Verse  for Arbor Day: Friday, April 28

 

Excerpt from Chapter 22 of The Age of Fable

By Thomas Bulfinch (1796-1867)

The wood-nymphs, Pan's partners in the dance, were but one class of nymphs. There were beside them the Naiads, who presided over brooks and fountains, the Oreads, nymphs of mountains and grottos, and the Nereids, sea-nymphs. The three last named were immortal, but the wood-nymphs, called Dryads or Hamadryads, were believed to perish with the trees which had been their abode and with which they had come into existence.

 

“Dryad”

By Mary Carolyn Davies (fl. ca. 1918-1924)

 

Dryad, hidden in this tree!

Break your bonds and talk to me!

No one’s watching, only peep

From your cave! The town’s asleep!

No one knows I stand here, so

Come! for they will never know!

Tell me what you think of here

When the Moon is sharp and clear,

When the clouds are over you,

When the ground is wet with dew.

Dryad, are you happy, say!

Do you like to live this way?

I will keep your secrets well,

I will never, never tell!

Dryad, hidden in our tree,

Come, oh, come and talk to me!

 

“Trees”

By Joyce Kilmer (1886-1918)

 

I think that I shall never see

A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest

Against the Earth's sweet flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day,

And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in Summer wear

A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;

Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me,

But only God can make a tree.

 

Above: An 1847 depiction of the “world-tree” Yggdrasil from Old Norse mythology by Oluf Olufsen Bagge, as described in the Icelandic Prose Edda. (Image Credit: Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons)

 

An Arboreal Reflection from the Editor

Reprinted from Cursus Honorum V: 8 (March 2005)

                When I was growing up in Edwardsville, Illinois, a tornado tore through our neighborhood and destroyed many trees throughout our subdivision. My favorite tree, a venerable box elder on the corner of our lot, was badly damaged – many of its branches had been torn off by the whirlwind. The insurance adjuster was advising us to cut it down, but I argued forcefully for saving it, be-cause I intuited that, given time, it would grow back to regain its former majestic stature. The tree was spared, and now, when we drive by our former home, we see it thriving more than ever before.

                Trees are like people – we should never give up on them, especially when they've been buffeted by the storms of life.

 

“An April Night”

By Lucy Maud Montgomery (1874-1942)

 

The Moon comes up o'er the deeps of the woods,

And the long, low dingles that hide in the hills,

Where the ancient beeches are moist with buds

Over the pools and the whimpering rills;

 

And with her the mists, like dryads that creep

From their oaks, or the spirits of pine-hid springs,

Who hold, while the eyes of the world are asleep,

With the wind on the hills their gay revellings.

 

Down on the marshlands with flicker and glow

Wanders Will-o'-the-Wisp through the night,

Seeking for witch-gold lost long ago

By the glimmer of goblin lantern-light.

 

The night is a sorceress, dusk-eyed and dear,

Akin to all eerie and elfin things,

Who weaves about us in meadow and mere

The spell of a hundred vanished Springs.

 

“Orpheus”

By William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

 

Orpheus with his lute made trees  

And the mountain tops that freeze  

  Bow themselves when he did sing:  

To his music plants and flowers  

Ever sprung; as sun and showers

  There had made a lasting spring.  

 

Everything that heard him play,  

Even the billows of the sea,  

  Hung their heads and then lay by.  

In sweet music is such art,

  Killing care and grief of heart  

  Fall asleep, or hearing, die.

 

In this 1595 painting by Sebastiaen Vrancx (1573–1647), Orpheus is enchanting the woodland creatures and the trees of the forest with his mystical melodies. (Image Credit: Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons)

 

“Orpheus and Eurydice”

Excepted from Chapter 24 of The Age of Fable

By Thomas Bulfinch (1796-1867)

Editor’s Note: Eurydice, Orpheus’ wife, was a dryad. 😊

                Orpheus was the son of Apollo and the Muse Calliope. He was presented by his father with a lyre and taught to play upon it, which he did to such perfection that nothing could withstand the charm of his music. Not only his fellow-mortals, but wild beasts were softened by his strains, and gathering round him laid by their fierceness, and stood entranced with his lay. Nay, the very trees and rocks were sensible to the charm. The former crowded round him and the latter relaxed somewhat of their hardness, softened by his notes.

                Hymen had been called to bless with his presence the nuptials of Orpheus with Eurydice; but though he attended, he brought no happy omens with him. His very torch smoked and brought tears into their eyes. In coincidence with such prognostics, Eurydice, shortly after her marriage, while wandering with the nymphs, her companions, was seen by the shepherd Aristaeus, who was struck by her beauty and made advances to her. She fled, and in flying trod upon a snake in the grass, was bitten in the foot, and died. Orpheus sang his grief to all who breathed the upper air, both gods and men, and finding it all unavailing resolved to seek his wife in the regions of the dead. He descended by a cave situated on the side of the promontory of Taenarus and arrived at the Stygian realm. He passed through crowds of ghosts and presented himself before the throne of Pluto and Proserpine. Accompanying the words with the lyre, he sung, “O deities of the under-world, to whom all we who live must come, hear my words, for they are true. I come not to spy out the secrets of Tartarus, nor to try my strength against the three-headed dog with snaky hair who guards the entrance. I come to seek my wife, whose opening years the poisonous viper's fang has brought to an untimely end. Love has led me here, Love, a god all powerful with us who dwell on the earth, and, if old traditions say true, not less so here. I implore you by these abodes full of terror, these realms of silence and uncreated things, unite again the thread of Eurydice's life. We all are destined to you, and sooner or later must pass to your domain. She too, when she shall have filled her term of life, will rightly be yours. But till then grant her to me, I beseech you. If you deny me, I cannot return alone; you shall triumph in the death of us both.”

                As he sang these tender strains, the very ghosts shed tears. Tantalus, in spite of his thirst, stopped for a moment his efforts for water, Ixion's wheel stood still, the vulture ceased to tear the giant's liver, the daughters of Danaus rested from their task of drawing water in a sieve, and Sisyphus sat on his rock to listen. Then for the first time, it is said, the cheeks of the Furies were wet with tears. Proserpine could not resist, and Pluto himself gave way. Eurydice was called. She came from among the new-arrived ghosts, limping with her wounded foot. Orpheus was permitted to take her away with him on one condition, that he should not turn around to look at her till they should have reached the upper air. Under this condition they proceeded on their way, he leading, she following, through passages dark and steep, in total silence, till they had nearly reached the outlet into the cheerful upper world, when Orpheus, in a moment of forgetfulness, to assure himself that she was still following, cast a glance behind him, when instantly she was borne away. Stretching out their arms to embrace each other, they grasped only the air! Dying now a second time, she yet cannot reproach her husband, for how can she blame his impatience to behold her? “Farewell,” she said, “a last farewell,” – and was hurried away, so fast that the sound hardly reached his ears.

                Orpheus endeavored to follow her, and besought permission to return and try once more for her release; but the stern ferryman repulsed him and refused passage. Seven days he lingered about the brink, without food or sleep; then bitterly accusing of cruelty the powers of Erebus, he sang his complaints to the rocks and mountains, melting the hearts of tigers and moving the oaks from their stations. He held himself aloof from womankind, dwelling constantly on the recollection of his sad mischance. The Thracian maidens tried their best to captivate him, but he repulsed their advances. They bore with him as long as they could; but finding him insensible one day, excited by the rites of Bacchus, one of them exclaimed, “See yonder our despiser!” and threw at him her javelin. The weapon, as soon as it came within the sound of his lyre, fell harmless at his feet. So did also the stones that they threw at him. But the women raised a scream and drowned the voice of the music, and then the missiles reached him and soon were stained with his blood. The Maenads tore him limb from limb, and threw his head and his lyre into the river Hebrus, down which they floated, murmuring sad music, to which the shores responded a plaintive symphony. The Muses gathered up the fragments of his body and buried them at Libethra, where the nightingale is said to sing over his grave more sweetly than in any other part of Greece. His lyre was placed by Jupiter among the stars. His shade passed a second time to Tartarus. where he sought out his Eurydice and embraced her with eager arms. They roam the happy fields together now, sometimes he is leading, sometimes she; and Orpheus gazes as much as he will upon her, no longer incurring a penalty for a thoughtless glance.