What plant we in this apple-tree? 
    Fruits that shall swell in sunny June,
    And redden in the August noon,
    And drop, when gentle airs come by,
    That fan the blue September sky,
      While children come, with cries of glee,
    And seek them where the fragrant grass
    Betrays their bed to those who pass,
      At the foot of the apple-tree.

      And when, above this apple-tree,
    The winter stars are quivering bright,
    The winds go howling through the night,
    Girls, whose eyes o’erflow with mirth,
    Shall peel its fruit by cottage hearth,
      And guests in prouder homes shall see,
    Heaped with the grape of Cintra’s vine,
    And golden orange of the line,
      The fruit of the apple-tree.

      The fruitage of this apple-tree,
    Winds and our flag of stripe and star
    Shall bear to coasts that lie afar,
    Where men shall wonder at the view,
    And ask in what fair groves they grew;
      And sojourners beyond the sea
    Shall think of childhood’s careless day,
    And long, long hours of summer play,
      In the shade of the apple-tree.

      Each year shall give this apple-tree
    A broader flush of roseate bloom,
    A deeper maze of verdurous gloom,
    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.”

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.

 [Illustration]

PART V.

 On and On

 JUNE.

“June” (by James Russell Lowell, 1819-91), is a fragment from “The
 Vision of Sir Launfal.”  It finds a place in this volume because it is the most perfect description of a charming day ever written.