| • | • |
FROM THE BRYANT ROOM ARCHIVES
By Myrna Sloam ©May/June 2008
Finding Inspiration: “The Planting of the Apple-Tree,”
a poem by William Cullen Bryant, by Myrna Sloam
With the arrival of spring, I want to share the poem, “The Planting of the Apple-Tree” by William Cullen Bryant, the founder of the first Reading Room in Roslyn and the man for whom our library is named. A noted journalist and poet, Bryant (1794-1878) purchased his country home, “Cedarmere,” in 1843. Concerned with man’s relationship to nature, and inspired by the landscape around him, he wrote many poems while living in what is now the Village of Roslyn Harbor.
As readers, we often wonder at the source of inspiration for the books or poems that we know and love. Living authors can be asked the question, but for past authors, it is rare to find the direct source of that creative process. While looking for the complete poem, I consulted a biography of Bryant, written by in son-in-law, Parke Godwin, and was surprised and pleased to find this reference to the source of the apple-tree poem:
‘In November 1846 Bryant wrote in a letter to Dr. Dewey…. “I have been, and am, at my place on Long Island, planting and transplanting trees, in the mist; sixty or seventy; some for shade; most for fruit. Hereafter, men, whose existence is at present merely possible, will gather pears from the trees which I have set in the ground, and wonder what old covey—for in those days the slang terms of the present time, by the ordinary process of change in languages, will have become classical—what old covey of past ages planted them? Or they will walk in the shade of the mulberry, apricot, and cherry- trees that I have set in a row beside a green lane, and think, if they think at all about the matter—for who can tell what the great-grandchildren of ours will think about—that they sprang up of themselves by the way.”’
Godwin notes that these thoughts appeared again five years later in Bryant’s poem, “The Planting of the Apple-Tree” published in the Atlantic Monthly magazine.
Printed below is the full poem. To learn more about Bryant, interested readers are encouraged to visit the Library’s archives housed in the Bryant Room, or to see the landscape that inspired him, to visit Cedarmere, his former home in Roslyn Harbor, now operated as a house museum by Nassau County.
The Planting of the Apple-Tree
Come, let us plant the apple-tree.
Cleave the tough greensward with the spade
Wide let its hollow bed be made;
There gently lay the roots, and there
Sift the dark mould with kindly care,
And press it o'er them tenderly,
As, round the sleeping infant's feet,
We softly fold the cradle-sheet;
So plant we the apple-tree.
What plant we in this apple-tree?
Buds, which the breath of summer days
Shall lengthen into leafy sprays;
Boughs where the thrush, with crimson breast,
Shall haunt and sing and hide her nest;
We plant, upon the sunny lea,
A shadow for the noontide hour,
A shelter from the summer shower,
When we plant the apple-tree.
What plant we in this apple-tree?
Sweets for a hundred flowery springs
To load the May-wind's restless wings,
When, from the orchard row, he pours
Its fragrance through our open doors;
A world of blossoms for the bee,
Flowers for the sick girl's silent room,
For the glad infant sprigs of bloom,
We plant with the apple-tree.
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,
And winds go howling through the night,
Girls, whose young 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 little 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;
'T is said he made some quaint old rhymes,
On planting the apple-tree."
Permission to reproduce, publish or display whole text articles must be obtained from the Bryant Library Archivist.
Email: localhistory@bryantlibrary.org