Tree Poetry and Literature

"I then gathered for myself staves, and stud-shafts, and cross-beams, and helves for each of the tools that I could work with; and bow-timbers and bolt-timbers for every work that I could perform—as many as I could carry of the comeliest trees. Nor came I home with a burden, for it pleased me not to bring all the wood home, even if I could bear it. In each tree I saw something that I needed at home; therefore I exhort every one who is able, and has many wains, to direct his steps to the self-same wood where I cut the stud-shafts. Let him there obtain more for himself, and load his wains with fair twigs, so that he may wind many a neat wall, and erect many a rare house, and build a fair enclosure, and therein dwell in joy and comfort both winter and summer, in such manner as I have not yet done."

The Tree of Liberty - Robert Burns (1838)

"Let Britain boast her hardy oak,
Her poplar and her pine, man,
Auld Britain ance could crack her joke,
And o'er her neighbours shine, man.
But seek the forest round and round,
And soon 'twill be agreed, man,
That sic a tree can not be found,
'Twixt London and the Tweed, man."

Isaac Rosenberg (1912)

"Then I spake to the tree
Were ye your own desire
What is it ye would be?
Answered the tree to me
I am my own desire;
I am what I would be."

John Muir (1878)

"We all travel the Milky Way together,
trees and men ... trees are travellers, in
the ordinary sense. They make journeys,
not very extensive ones, it is true: but our
own little comes and goes are only little
more than tree-wavings – many of them
not so much."

Old English Rune Poem