William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. (1878–1962). Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1920.

Trees Need Not Walk the Earth

TREES need not walk the earth

For beauty or for bread;

Beauty will come to them

Where they stand.

Here among the children of the sap

Is no pride of ancestry:

A birch may wear no less the morning

Than an oak.

Here are no heirlooms

Save those of loveliness,

In which each tree

Is kingly in its heritage of grace.

Here is but beauty’s wisdom

In which all trees are wise.

Trees need not walk the earth

For beauty or for bread;

Beauty will come to them

In the rainbow—

The sunlight—

And the lilac-haunted rain;

And bread will come to them

As beauty came:

In the rainbow—

In the sunlight—

In the rain.

The Nation