Page:Oklahoma Arbor and Bird Day, Friday, March Twelfth, 1909.pdf/30

28  The tremendous unity of the pine absorbs and moulds the life of a race. The pine shadows rest upon a nation. The northern peoples, century after century, lived under one or other of the two great powers of the pine and the sea, both indefinite. They dwelt amidst the forests as they wandered on the waves, and saw no end nor any other horizon. Still the dark, green trees, or dark, green waters, jugged the dawn with their fringe, or their foam. And whatever elements of imagination, or of warrior strength, or of domestic justice, were brought down by the Norweigian or the Goth, against the dissoluteness of degradation of the south of Europe, were taught them under the green roofs and wild penetralia of the pine.—John Ruskin.

 

