quotations about trees
Street trees do all kinds of practical good that couldn't have been foreseen when they were first planted: carbon sequestration, water runoff absorption and so forth. But beauty remains the real reason for their being.
IAN JACK
"We hardly notice them. But street trees are monuments to city life", The Guardian, May 13, 2017
The trees that bud and blossom forth,
Throughout the world from south to north,
Are tokens that a life will bloom
When manhood's passed beyond the tomb.
T. AUGUSTUS FORBES LEITH
"On Flowers"
The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.
JOHN MUIR
John of the Mountains: The Unpublished Journals of John Muir
The tree's green complexion fades inauspiciously, like aging paint -- its once thick pyramidal beauty a shallow shell of itself. It is translucent from its base, up to past halfway. Thin is the circumference of her branches. Like cowlicks and thinning hair that reveal a balding man's scalp, they show to the bark. The top still shimmers. It shows no signs of the disease slowly -- steadily -- creeping up from below.
COLUMNIST S
"A dying tree that's still rich in memories", Chicago Sun Times, April 28, 2017
What can be more beautiful than the trees? Their lofty trunks, august in their simplicity, asserting, to the most inexperienced eye, their infinite superiority over the imitative pillars of man's pride.
W. HOWITT
"The Beauty of Trees", Lessons in Modern Farming, Or, Agriculture for Schools
Even though there is little nutrition or energy in wood, there is some -- and there are plenty of organisms that will try and use it. But trees are not defenceless, and can fight back with physical barriers or even chemical warfare. When one tree is attacked by these destructive forces, individuals may even signal to other trees to be aware and prepare their own defences to fight off death and decay.
CHRIS BRACK
"Where the old things are: Australia's most ancient trees", Phys Org, April 18, 2017
The place is all awave with trees,
Limes, myrtles, purple-beaded,
Acacias having drunk the lees
Of the night-dew, faint headed,
And wan, grey olive-woods, which seem
The fittest foliage for a dream.
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
An Island
As the twig is bent the tree is inclined.
GEORGE ADE
"The Fable of the Kid Who Shifted His Ideal", Fables in Slang
Two Trees
A portion of your soul has been
entwined with mine
A gentle kind of togetherness, while
separately we stand.
As two trees deeply rooted in
separate plots of ground,
While their topmost branches
come together,
Forming a miracle of lace
against the heavens
JANET MILLS
The Power of a Woman
You are a poet, sycamore,
A minor poet.
You are not much good in a practical world;
You shed your ragged leaves early, and clutter up the landscape.
But you are lovely on winter evenings
Against the afterglow--
Bare and pale and a little disdainful,
But yourself.
KARLE WILSON BAKER
"Temperate Tribute", Burning Bush
When great trees fall,
rocks on distant hills shudder,
lions hunker down
in tall grasses,
and even elephants
lumber after safety.
MAYA ANGELOU
"When Great Trees Fall"
A tree stands in the seasons of time. Between generations. Basks in the reverberations of life and death. Withstands the storms from which we shelter. This tree did not bend. Or break. Or sway. Trees touch the sky while simultaneously rooted in earth. Remind us by their mere presence of their worth. Kiss our eyes with breathless simplicity. Become rooted in our lives as they silently inch taller and we grow older.
COLUMNIST S
"A dying tree that's still rich in memories", Chicago Sun Times, April 28, 2017
I think that I shall never see
A billboard lovely as a tree.
Perhaps, unless the billboards fall,
I'll never see a tree at all.
OGDEN NASH
Song of the Open Road