The Lesson of a Tree
I should not take either the biggest or the most picturesque tree to illustrate it. Here is one of my favorites now before me, a fine yellow poplar, quite straight, perhaps 90 feet high, and four thick at the butt. How strong, vital, enduring! how dumbly eloquent! What suggestions of imperturbability and being, as against the human trait of mere seeming. Then the qualities, almost emotional, palpably artistic, heroic, of a tree; so innocent and harmless, yet so savage. It is, yet says nothing. How it rebukes by its tough and equable serenity all weathers, this gusty-temper’d little whiffet, man, that runs indoors at a mite of rain or snow. Science (or rather half-way science) scoffs at reminiscence of dryad and hamadryad, and of trees speaking. But, if they don’t, they do as well as most speaking, writing, poetry, sermons—or rather they do a great deal better. I should say indeed that those old dryad-reminiscences are quite as true as any, and profounder than most reminiscences we get. (“Cut this out, as the quack mediciners say, and keep by you.) Go and sit in a grove or woods, with one or more of those voiceless companions, and read the foregoing, and think.
One lesson from affiliating a tree—perhaps the greatest moral lesson anyhow from earth, rocks, animals, is that same lesson of inherency, of what is, without the least regard to what the looker on (the critic) supposes or says, or whether he likes or dislikes. What worse—what more general malady pervades each and all of us, our literature, education, attitude toward each other, (even toward ourselves,) than a morbid trouble about seems, (generally temporarily seems too,) and no trouble at all, or hardly any, about the sane, slow-growing, perennial, real parts of character, books, friendship, marriage—humanity’s invisible foundations and hold-together?
by Walter Whitman
新概念英语第二册美音版 16-A Polite Request
新概念英语第二册美音版 40-Food and Talk
新概念英语第二册美音版 29-Taxi
新概念英语第二册美音版 36-Across the Channel
新概念英语第二册美音版 28-No Parking
新概念英语第二册美音版 34-Quick Work
新概念英语第二册美音版 07-Too Late
新概念英语第二册美音版 35-Stop Thief
新概念英语第二册美音版 47-A Thirsty Ghost
新概念英语第二册美音版 26-The Best Art Critics
新概念英语第二册美音版 37-The Olympic Games
新概念英语第二册美音版 46-Expensive and Uncomfortable
新概念英语第二册美音版 13-The Greenwood Boys
新概念英语第二册美音版 42-Not Very Musical
新概念英语第二册美音版 01-A Private Conversation
新概念英语第二册美音版 18-He Often does This
新概念英语第二册美音版 43-Over the South Pole
新概念英语第二册美音版 15-Good News
新概念英语第二册美音版 09-A Cold Welcome
新概念英语第二册美音版 45-A Clear Conscience
新概念英语第二册美音版 33-Out of the Darkness
新概念英语第二册美音版 06-Percy Buttons
新概念英语第二册美音版 44-Through the Forest
新概念英语第二册美音版 10-Not for Jazz
新概念英语第二册美音版 24-It Could be Worse
新概念英语第二册美音版 04-An Exciting Trip
新概念英语第二册美音版 14-Do You Speak English
新概念英语第二册美音版 39-Am I All Right
新概念英语第二册美音版 02-Breakfast or Lunch
新概念英语第二册美音版 49-The End of a Dream
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