 The Purpose of Arbor Day
Author Unknown
First pupil.
To avert treelessness; to improve the climatic conditions; for the sanitation and embellishment of home environments; for the love of the beautiful and useful combined in the music and majesty of a tree, as fancy and truth unite in an epic poem, Arbor Day was created. It has grown with the vigor and beneficence of a grand truth or a great tree.
- J. Sterling Morton.
Second pupil.
BE NOBLE by Lowell
Be noble! and the nobleness that lies
In other men sleeping, but never dead,
Will rise in majesty to meet thine own;
Then wilt thou see it gleam in many eyes,
Then will pure light around thy path be shed,
And thou wilt nevermore be sad and lone.
Third pupil.
LEAVES by Ruskin
The leaves of the herbage at our feet take all kinds of strange shapes as if to invite us to examine them. Star-shaped, heart-shaped, spear-shaped, arrow-shaped, fretted, fringed, cleft, furrowed, serrated, sinuated, in whorls, in tufts, in spires, in wreaths, endlessly expressive, deceptive, fantastic, never the same from footstalk to blossom, they seem perpetually to tempt our watchfulness and take delight in outstripping our wonder.
Fourth pupil.
INFLUENCE OF NATURE by Wordsworth
Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods
And mountains, and of all that we behold
From this green earth; of all the mighty world
Of eye and ear, both what they half create
And what perceive; well pleased to recognize
In nature, and the language of the sense,
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul,
Of all my moral being.
Fifth pupil.
I regard the forest as an heritage, given to us by nature, not for spoil or to devastate, but to be wisely used, reverently honored, and carefully maintained. I regard the forest as a gift entrusted to us only for transient care during a short space of time, to be surrendered to posterity again as unimpaired property, with increased riches and augmented blessings, to pass as a sacred patrimony from generation to generation.
- Baron Ferdinand von Mueller.
Sixth pupil.
NATURE'S COMFORT by Longfellow
If thou art worn and hard beset
With sorrows that thou wouldst forget,
If thou wouldst read a lesson that will keep
Thy heart from fainting and thy soul from sleep,
Go to the woods and hills! No tears
Dim the sweet look that Nature wears.
- Longfellow.
Seventh pupil.
It may be said that the measure of attention given to trees indicates the condition of agriculture and civilization of a country.
- Mahé.
Eighth pupil.
I said I will not walk with men today,
But I will go among the blessed trees,-
Among the forest trees I'll take my way,
And they shall say to me what words they please.
And when I came among the trees of God,
With all their million voices sweet and blest,
They gave me welcome. So I slowly trod
Their arched and lofty aisles, with heart at rest.
Ninth pupil.
Forests can flourish independent of agriculture; but agriculture cannot prosper without forests.
Tenth pupil.
The man who builds does a work which begins to decay as soon as he has done, but the work of the man who plants trees grows better and better, year after year, for generations.
Eleventh pupil.
Of all man's works of art a cathedral is greatest. A vast and majestic tree is greater than that.
- H.W. Beecher.
Twelfth pupil.
In an agricultural country the preservation or destruction of forests must determine the decision of Hamlet's alternative: "to be or not to be." An animal flayed or a tree stripped of its bark does not perish more surely than a land deprived of the trees.
- Felix L. Oswald.
Thirteenth pupil.
By their fruit ye shall know them. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but the corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Therefore by their fruits ye shall know them. |
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