Page:Scenes in my Native Land.pdf/123

Rh Or train the cypress, and let none profane Her pious care. Oh Father! grant us grace In all life's toils, so, with a steadfast hand Evil and good to poise, as not to mark Our way with wrecks, nor when the sands of time Run low, with saddened eye the past survey, And mourn the rashness time can ne'er restore.

No one nurtured in New England, amid the veneration of fine trees, can traverse the more recently settled regions of New York, and especially the far Western States, without bemoaning the recklessness with which the ancient glory of the forest is sacrificed. Hills and vales are seen covered with stately and immense trunks, blackened with flame, and smitten down in every form and variety of misery. They lie like soldiers, when the battle is done, in the waters, among the ashes, wounded, beheaded, denuded of their limbs, their exhumed roots, like chevaux de frise, glaring on the astonished eye.

The roof of the smallest log-hut, or shanty, seems the signal of extinction to the most sacred and solemn groves; and Cromwell advanced not more surely from Naseby to the throne, than the axe-armed settler to the destruction of the kingly trees of Heaven's anointing.

The extirpation of the thicket from the field where