1.

"I am TaNe—the Tree-God!
Mine are forests not a few—
Forests, and I love them greatly,
Moss-encrusted, ancient, stately—
Lusty, lightly-clad, and new.
Mottled lights and chequered changes,
Mid all these my roam and range is;
Shadowy aisle and avenue:
Creeper-girdled column too:
In the mystic mid-day night,
Many-mullioned openings bright;
Solemn tracery far aloof
Letting tre foiled radiance through:
Many a splintered sun-shaft leaning
Staff-like straight against the roof
Of black alcoves, overspread,
page 259 Arched, with foliage—intervening,
Layer on layer in verdurous heaps,—
'Twixt that blackness and the sun;
With a tiny gap, but one,
Light-admitting; brilliance-proof,
Day-defying, all unriven
Elsewhere—all beside offscreening
Of the grand wide glow of Heaven!
Or, where thinner the green woof
Veils the vault of outer blue,
Many a branch that upward creeps,
Wandering darkly overhead
Under luminous leafy deeps,
Which an emerald splendour steeps,
From the noon that o'er them sleeps!—
O I tend them, love, defend them,
And all kindly influence lend them;
For my worship all are suited,
If, but, in the firm earth rooted,
By the living air recruited,
They, ere it grow withered, dull—
Their green mantle beautiful,
Still repair, revive, renew."

(Then to himself, more musingly:)

• "Many creeds, and sects and churches,—hopeful each its own way going;
• Bigots, sceptics, saints and sinners—precious to the Power all-knowing.
• So they keep absorbing ever more of Truth, the ever-growing."page 260
• (This, by the way, because he could not smother
• That inveterate tendency
• To find in all things symbols of each other.)