Hoyt & Roberts, comps. Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. 1922.
Trees and Plants (Unclassified)
The place is all awave with trees,
Limes, myrtles, purple-beaded,
Acacias having drunk the lees
Of the night-dew, faint headed,
And wan, grey olive-woods, which seem
The fittest foliage for a dream.
E. B. Browning—An Island.
Stranger, if thou hast learned a truth which needs
No school of long experience, that the world
Is full of guilt and misery, and hast seen
Enough of all its sorrows, crimes and cares,
To tire thee of it, enter this wild wood
And view the haunts of Nature. The calm shade
Shall bring a kindred calm, and the sweet breeze
That makes the green leaves dance, shall waft a balm
To thy sick heart.
Bryant—Inscription for the Entrance to a Wood.
The groves were God’s first temples. Ere man learned
To hew the shaft, and lay the architrave,
And spread the roof above them,—ere he framed
The lofty vault, to gather and roll back
The sound of anthems; in the darkling wood,
Amidst the cool and silence, he knelt down
And offered to the Mightiest solemn thanks
And supplication.
Bryant—A Forest Hymn.
The shad-bush, white with flowers,
Brightened the glens; the new leaved butternut
And quivering poplar to the roving breeze
Gave a balsamic fragrance.
Bryant—The Old Man’s Counsel. L. 28.
Oh, leave this barren spot to me!
Spare, woodman, spare the beechen tree!
Campbell—The Beech-Tree’s Petition.
As by the way of innuendo
Lucus is made a non lucendo.
Churchill—The Ghost. Bk. II. V. 257. “Lucus a non lucendo.—Lucus (a grove), from non lucendo (not admitting light).” A derivation given by Quintilian I. 16, and by others.
No tree in all the grove but has its charms,
Though each its hue peculiar.
Cowper—The Task. Bk. I. L. 307.
Some boundless contiguity of shade.
Cowper—The Task. Bk. II.
In the place where the tree falleth, there it shall be.
Ecclesiastes. XI. 3.
Es ist dafür gesorgt, dass die Bäume nicht in den Himmel wachsen.
Care is taken that trees do not grow into the sky.
Goethe—Wahrheit und Dichtung. Motto to Pt. III.
Where is the pride of Summer,—the green prime,—
The many, many leaves all twinkling?—three
On the mossed elm; three on the naked lime
Trembling,—and one upon the old oak tree!
Where is the Dryad’s immortality?
Hood—Ode. Autumn.
Nullam vare, sacra vite prius arborem.
Plant no other tree before the vine.
Horace—Carmina. I. 18. Imitation, in sense and meter from Alcæus.
I think that I shall never scan
A tree as lovely as a man.
****
A tree depicts divinest plan,
But God himself lives in a man.
Joyce Kilmer—Trees.
I thick that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
****
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.
Joyce Kilmer—Trees.
It was the noise
Of ancient trees falling while all was still
Before the storm, in the long interval
Between the gathering clouds and that light breeze
Which Germans call the Wind’s bride.
Leland—The Fall of the Trees.
This is the forest primeval.
Longfellow—Evangeline. Introduction.
The tree is known by his fruit.
Matthew. XII. 33.
The gadding vine.
Milton—Lycidas. L. 40.
Cedar, and pine, and fir, and branching palm,
A sylvan scene, and as the ranks ascend
Shade above shade, a woody theatre
Of stateliest view.
Milton—Paradise Lost. Bk. IV. L. 139.
And all amid them stood the Tree of Life,
High eminent, blooming ambrosial fruit
Of vegetable gold.
Milton—Paradise Lost. Bk. IV. L. 218.
A pillar’d shade
High over-arch’d, and echoing walks between.
Milton—Paradise Lost. Bk. IX. L. 1,106.
Woodman, spare that tree!
Touch not a single bough!
In youth it sheltered me,
And I’ll protect it now.
George P. Morris—Woodman, Spare That Tree.
When the sappy boughs
Attire themselves with blooms, sweet rudiments
Of future harvest.
John Phillips—Cider. Bk. II. L. 437.
Grove nods at grove.
Pope—Moral Essays. Ep. IV. L. 117.
Spreading himself like a green bay-tree.
Psalms. XXXVII. 35.
The highest and most lofty trees have the most reason to dread the thunder.
Rollin—Ancient History. Bk. VI. Ch. II. Sec. I.
Stultus est qui fructus magnarum arborum spectat, altitudinem non metitur.
He is a fool who looks at the fruit of lofty trees, but does not measure their height.
Quintus Curtius Rufus—De Rebus Gestis Alexandri Magni. VII. 8.
So bright in death I used to say,
So beautiful through frost and cold!
A lovelier thing I know to-day,
The leaf is growing old,
And wears in grace of duty done,
The gold and scarlet of the sun.
Margaret E. Sangster—A Maple Leaf.
Hath not old custom made this life more sweet
Than that of painted pomp? Are not these woods
More free from peril than the envious court?
As You Like It. Act II. Sc. 1. L. 2.
But, poor old man, thou prunest a rotten tree,
That cannot so much as a blossom yield
In lieu of all thy pains and husbandry.
As You Like It. Act II. Sc. 3. L. 63.
Under the greenwood tree
Who loves to lie with me,
And tune his merry note
Unto the sweet bird’s throat,
Come hither, come hither, come hither:
No enemy here shall he see,
But winter and rough weather.
As You Like It. Act II. Sc. 5. L. 1.
If aught possess thee from me, it is dross,
Usurping ivy, brier, or idle moss;
Who, all for want of pruning, with intrusion
Infect thy sap and live on thy confusion.
Comedy of Errors. Act II. Sc. 2. L. 179.
Who am no more but as the tops of trees,
Which fence the roots they grow by and defend them.
Pericles. Act I. Sc. 2. L. 29.
A barren detested vale, you see it is;
The trees, though summer, yet forlorn and lean,
O’ercome with moss and baleful mistletoe.
Titus Andronicus. Act II. Sc. 3. L. 93.
Now all the tree-tops lay asleep,
Like green waves on the sea,
As still as in the silent deep
The ocean-woods may be.
Shelley—The Recollection. II.
Pun-provoking thyme.
Shenstone—The Schoolmistress. St. 11.
The trees were gazing up into the sky,
Their bare arms stretched in prayer for the snows.
Alex. Smith—A Life-Drama. Sc. 2.
The laurell, meed of mightie conquerours
And poets sage; the firre that weepeth still;
The willow, worne of forlorne paramours;
The eugh, obedient to the bender’s will;
The birch, for shafts; the sallow for the mill;
The mirrhe sweete-bleeding in the bitter wound;
The warlike beech; the ash for nothing ill;
The fruitfull olive; and the platane round;
The carver holme; the maple seldom inward sound.
Spenser—Faerie Queene. Bk. I. Canto I. St. 8.
A temple whose transepts are measured by miles,
Whose chancel has morning for priest,
Whose floor-work the foot of no spoiler defiles,
Whose musical silence no music beguiles,
No festivals limit its feast.
Swinburne—Palace of Pan. St. 8.
The woods appear
With crimson blotches deeply dashed and crossed,—
Sign of the fatal pestilence of Frost.
Bayard Taylor—Mon-Da-Min. St. 38.
The linden broke her ranks and rent
The woodbine wreaths that bind her,
And down the middle buzz! she went
With all her bees behind her!
The poplars, in long order due,
With cypress promenaded,
The shock-head willows two and two
By rivers gallopaded.
Tennyson—Amphion. St. 5.
O Love, what hours were thine and mine,
In lands of palm and southern pine;
In lands of palm, of orange-blossom,
Of olive, aloe, and maize, and vine.
Tennyson—The Daisy. St. 1.
The woods are hush’d, their music is no more;
The leaf is dead, the yearning past away;
New leaf, new life—the days of frost are o’er;
New life, new love, to suit the newer day:
New loves are sweet as those that went before:
Free love—free field—we love but while we may.
Tennyson—Idylls of the King. The Last Tournament. L. 276.
Now rings the woodland loud and long,
The distance takes a lovelier hue,
And drowned in yonder living blue
The lark becomes a sightless song.
Tennyson—In Memoriam. Pt. CXV.
But see the fading many-coloured Woods,
Shade deep’ning over shade, the country round
Imbrown: crowded umbrage, dusk and dun,
Of every hue from wan declining green
To sooty dark.
Thomson—Seasons. Autumn. L. 950.
Some to the holly hedge
Nestling repair; and to the thicket some;
Some to the rude protection of the thorn.
Thomson—Seasons. Spring. L. 634.
Welcome, ye shades! ye bowery Thickets hail!
Ye lofty Pines! ye venerable Oaks!
Ye Ashes wild, resounding o’er the steep!
Delicious is your shelter to the soul.
Thomson—Seasons. Summer. L. 469.
Or ruminate in the contiguous shade.
Thomson—Seasons. Winter.
Sure thou did’st nourish once! and many springs,
Many bright mornings, much dew, many showers,
Passed o’er thy head; many light hearts and wings,
Which now are dead, lodg’d in thy living bowers.
And still a new succession sings and flies;
Fresh groves grow up, and their green branches shoot
Towards the old and still-enduring skies;
While the low violet thrives at their root.
Vaughan—The Timber.
In such green palaces the first kings reign’d,
Slept in their shades, and angels entertain’d;
With such old counsellors they did advise,
And by frequenting sacred groves grew wise.
Edmund Waller—On St. James’ Park. L. 71.
A brotherhood of venerable Trees.
Wordsworth—Sonnet composed at Castle——.
One impulse from a vernal wood
May teach you more of man,
Of moral evil and of good,
Than all the sages can.
Wordsworth—The Tables Turned.