Page:Poems that every child should know (ed. Burt, 1904).djvu/251

Rh And loosen, when the frost-clouds lower,

The crisp brown leaves in thicker shower.

The years shall come and pass, but we

Shall hear no longer, where we lie,

The summer's songs, the autumn's sigh,

In the boughs of the apple-tree.

And time shall waste this apple-tree.

Oh, when its aged branches throw

Thin shadows on the ground below,

Shall fraud and force and iron will

Oppress the weak and helpless still?

What shall the tasks of mercy be,

Amid the toils, the strifes, the tears

Of those who live when length of years

Is wasting this apple-tree?

"Who planted this old apple-tree?"

The children of that distant day

Thus to some aged man shall say;

And, gazing on its mossy stem,

The gray-haired man shall answer them:

"A poet of the land was he,

Born in the rude but good old times;

'Tis said he made some quaint old rhymes

On planting the apple-tree."

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