University of Virginia Library

“I am Tanë—the Tree-God!
Mine are forests not a few—
Forests, and I love them greatly,
Moss-encrusted, ancient, stately;
Lusty, lightly-clad, and new.
Mottled lights and chequered changes,
Mid all these my roam and range is;
Shadowy aisle and avenue;
Creeper-girdled column too:
In the mystic mid-day night
Many-mullioned openings bright;
Solemn tracery far aloof
Letting trefoiled radiance through!
Many a splintered sun-shaft leaning
Staff-like straight against the roof
Of black alcoves overspread—
Arched with foliage intervening
Layer on layer in verdurous heaps,
'Twixt that blackness and the sun;
With a tiny gap, but one,
Light-admitting; brilliance-proof,
Day-defying, all unriven
Elsewhere—all beside offscreening
Of the grand wide glow of Heaven!
Or, where thinner the green woof
Veils the vault of outer blue,
Many a branch that upward creeps,
Wandering darkly overhead
Under luminous leafy deeps,
Which an emerald splendour steeps
From the noon that o'er them sleeps!—
O I tend them, love, defend them,
And all kindly influence lend them;
For my worship all are suited,
If, but, in the firm earth rooted,
By the living air recruited,
They, ere it grow withered, dull,
Their green mantle beautiful,
Still repair, revive, renew.”

“Many creeds, and sects and churches,—hopeful each its own way going;
Bigots, sceptics, saints and sinners—precious to the Power all-knowing,
So they keep absorbing ever more of Truth, the ever-growing.”
(This, by the way, because he could not smother
That inveterate tendency
To find in all things symbols of each other.)

“I am Tanë—the Tree-God!
My sons are a million;
In every region,
Their name it is legion;
And they build a pavilion
My glory to hold.
Which shall my favourites be?
Which are most pleasing to me,
Of their shapes and their qualities manifold?—
The gigantic parasite-myrtle
That over its victims piles up
Great domes of pure vermilion
Filling the black defiles up:
The King-Pine that grandly towers:—
The fuchsia-tree with its flowers,
Poor rustics that timidly ape
Their sisters of daintier shape
With their delicate bells downhung,
And their waxen filaments flung
So jauntily out in the air,
Like girls in short crimson kirtle
That spins in the wind as they whirl
A-tiptoe one pointed foot,
And one horizontal outshoot:—
The clematis-garlands that curl
And their graceful wreaths unfurl
From many a monstrous withe;
Snowy-starred serpents and lithe
That in sable contortions writhe,
Till Fancy could almost declare
That great Ophiucus, down-hurled
From his throne in the skyey star-world,
Had been caught with his glittering gems
'Mid those giant entangling stems
Which he deemed but a dwarfish copse,
So was struggling and surging in vain
To rear his vast coils o'er their tops
And his gleaming lair regain!—
Then the limber-limbed tree that will shower its
Corollas—a saffrony sleet,
Till Taupo's soft sappharine face is
Illumined for wonderful spaces
With a matting of floating flowerets—
Drift-bloom and a watersward meet
For a watersprite's fairy feet;
'Tis the kowhai, that spendthrift so golden:
But its kinsman to Nature beholden
For raiment its beauty to fold in
Deep-dyed as of trogon or lory,
How with parrot-bill fringes 'tis burning,
One blood-red mound of glory!
Then the pallid eurybia turning
The vernal hill-slopes hoary
With its feathers so faintly sweet
And its under-leaves white as a sheet;—
All of them, all—both the lofty and lowly,
Equally love I and wholly;
So that each take form and feature
After its genuine law and nature
Its true and peculiar plan;
So that each, with live sap flowing,
Keep on growing, upward growing,
As high from the earth as it can!

“Many creatures—varied features—dark and bright still onward moving;
Tyrants—tumblers—boors and beauties, kings and clowns alike approving,
To them all the Gods are gracious—to them all the Gods are loving.

“I am Tanë the Tree-God.
What will you bring to me?
Fruits of all kinds will I take
So ripe, true fruits they be!
Melting pulp—juicy flake—
Sweet kernel or bitter—
None are better—none fitter—
All are grateful to me.
But your shell with no lining
Though splendidly shining;
But your husk with a varnish
That nought seems to tarnish;
If any of these I espy,
Empty and hard and dry,
That serve but for clamour and clatter
Or the genuine fruit to belie;
These cheats will I shiver and shatter
And their fragments scornfully scatter,
O none of them bring to me!

“Pains and passions—deeds and duties—virtues, vices—gifts and graces—
Have not all, their value, uses—in their various fitting places—
So they be not false pretences, mocking masks for natural faces?—

“There, my sweet one, that is what,
Were I Tanë (which, thank God, I'm not,
Seeing mine's a happier lot)
That is about what I should say,
Had I my own, my wondrous way.”