  [image not available William Cullen Bryant. Come, let us plant the apple tree! Cleave the tough greensward with the spade; Wide let its hollow bed be made; There gently lay the roots, and there Sift the dark mold with kindly care, And press it o’er them tenderly, As round the sleeping infant’s feet We softly fold the cradle sheet; So plant we the apple tree. What plant we in this apple tree? Buds, which the breath of summer days Shall lengthen into leafy sprays; Boughs, where the thrush with crimson breast We plant upon the sunny lea A shadow for the noontide hour, A shelter from the summer shower, When we plant the apple tree. What plant we in this apple tree? Sweets for a hundred flowery springs To load the May wind’s restless wings, When from the orchard row he pours Its fragrance through our open doors. A world of blossoms for the bee, Flowers for the sick girl’s silent room, For the glad infant sprigs of bloom We plant with the apple tree. What plant we in this apple tree? Fruits that shall swell in sunny June, And redden in the August noon, And drop when gentle airs come by That fan the blue September sky, While children, wild with noisy glee, Shall scent their fragrance as they pass And search for them the tufted grass At the foot of the apple tree. And when above this apple tree The winter stars are quivering bright, Girls whose young eyes o’erflow with mirth Shall peel its fruit by cottage hearth; And guests in prouder homes shall see, Heaped with the orange and the grape, As fair as they in tint and shape, The fruit of the apple tree. The fruitage of this apple tree Winds and our flag of stripe and star Shall bear to coasts that lie afar, Where men shall wonder at the view And ask in what fair groves they grew; And they who roam beyond the sea Shall think of childhood’s careless day And long hours passed in summer play In the shade of the apple tree. But time shall waste this apple tree. Oh! when its aged branches throw Their shadows on the world below, Shall fraud and force and iron will Oppress the weak and helpless still? What shall the task of mercy be Amid the toils, the strifes, the tears Of those who live when length of years Is wasting this apple tree? “Who planted this old apple tree?” The children of that distant day Thus to some aged man shall say; And, gazing on its mossy stem, The gray-haired man shall answer them: “A poet of the land was he, Born in the rude but good old times; ’Tis said he made some quaint old rhymes On planting the apple tree.” —William Cullen Bryant. |
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