TO A CERTAIN THREE OAKS IN DRUID HILL PARK
Let me lean against you, my Loves,
Give me a place, my darlings,
I am so happy, so fain, so full, in your large company.
I knew a saint that said he never went among men without returning home less a man than he was before he went forth. But it is not so with you: I am always more a man when I converse with you. Who is so manly and so manifold sweet as a tree? There is none that can talk like a tree: for a tree says always to me exactly that which I wish him to say. A man is apt to say what I did not desire to hear, or what I had no need to know at that time. A tree knows always my necessity.
O Earth, O mother, thou my Beautiful,
Why frowns this shallow feud 'twixt me and thee?
Were I a bad son, deaf, undutiful,
Nor loved thy mother-talk, thy gramarye
Of groves, thy hale discourse of fact in terms
That mince not, yea, thy sharp cold winter
Like as the love lore thine expressive germs
Of spring do plainly petal forth,—'twere cause
Conceivable of quarrel.