Specimen Programs. — Port Henry, N. Y.-Continued. 1. From "Forest Hymn : " "The groves were God's first temples," eight lines. See Index. 2. From the same: "Father, thou hast not left thyself without a witness," etc., ten lines. 3. From "Among the Trees: " The wind of May is sweet," etc., six lines. See Index. 4. From the same: 5. From the same: "Trees of the forest, and the open plain," etc., ten lines. “Nay, doubt not,” etc., seven lines. 6. From "An Inscription for the Entrance to a Wood." First nine lines. See Index. 7. From "The Antiquity of Freedom: " "Here are old trees," etc., twelve lines. See Index. 8. From *"The Planting of the Apple Tree." First stanza. See Index. THE RED MAPLE, DEDICATED TO HENRY W. LONGFELLOW. By First Grammar Department. GEMS FROM LONGFELLOW. 1. From "The Hemlock Tree." See Index. "The Masque of Pandora: " 2. From Specimen Programs. - Port Henry, N. Y.-Continued. 5. From "Woods in Winter:" O'er the bare upland, and away Through the long reach of desert woods, 6. From "To the Driving Cloud: " Back, then, back to thy woods! Where, twisted round the barren oak, The summer vine in beauty clung, There as a monarch thou reignest. In autumn the leaves of the maple Pine trees waft through its chambers the odorous breath of their branches. 10. From "Voices of the Night." First two stanzas. See Index. THE IRONWOOD, DEDICATED TO RALPH WALDO EMERSON. By the High School. GEMS FROM EMERSON : 1. From "Nature: " At the gates of the forest, the surprised man of the world is forced to leave his city estimates of great and small, wise and foolish. The knapsack of custom falls off his back with the first step he takes into these precincts. The tempered light of the woods is like a perpetual morning, and is stimulating and heroic. The stems of pines, hemlocks and oaks almost gleam like iron on the excited eye. The incommunicable trees begin to persuade us to live with them and quit our life of solemn trifles. 2. From "The Adirondacks: " The wood was sovran with centennial trees,- Three conifers, white, pitch and Norway pines, 3. From "Farming: " Five-leaved, three-leaved and two-leaved, grew Our patron pine was fifteen feet in girth, Set out a pine-tree, and it dies in the first year, or lives a poor spindle. But nature drops a pine cone in Mariposa, and it lives fifteen centuries, grows three or four hundred feet high, and thirty in diameter,- grows in a grove of giants, like a colonnade of Thebes. Ask the tree how it was done. It did not grow on a ridge, but in a basin, where it found deep soil, cold enough and dry enough for the pine; defending itself from the sun by growing in groves, and from the wind by the walls of the mountain. The roots that shot deepest, and the stems of happiest exposure, drew the nourishment from the rest, until the less thrifty perished. 4. The influence of forests on the healthfulness of the atmosphere demands thoughtful attention. Plants imbibe from the air carbonic acid, and other gaseous and volatile products, exhaled by animals or developed by the natural phenomena of decomposition. These the trees, more than the smaller plants, absorb, and instead of them pour into the atmosphere pure oxygen, essential to the life of animals. The carbon, the very substance of wood, is taken from the carbonic acid thus absorbed. -Continued. Specimen Programs. — Port Henry, N. Y. — 5. From "The Earth" (Nature): See yonder leafless trees against the sky, 6. From "My Garden: " If I could put my woods in song, Snow-loving pines and oaks instead; 7. From "The Method of Nature:" Limbs into branches, branches into twigs, As if they loved the element, and hasted There is no revolt in all the kingdoms from the common weal; no detachment of an individual. Every leaf is an exponent of the world. When we behold the landscape in a poetic spirit, we do not reckon individuals. Nature knows neither palm, nor oak, but only vegetable life, which sprouts into forests, and festoons the globe with a garland of grasses and vines. In the woods a man casts off his years, and at what period soever of life, is always a child. In the woods is perpetual youth. Within these plantations of God, a decorum and sanctity reign, a perennial festival is dressed, and the guest sees not how he should tire of them in a thousand years. In the woods, we return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life- -no disgrace, no calamity, which nature cannot repair. |