<h2><SPAN name="chap65"></SPAN>THE DIVINE FOREST</h2>
<p class="poem">
If there be leaves on the forest floor,<br/>
Dead leaves there are and nothing more,<br/>
If trunks of trees seem sentinels,<br/>
For what their vigil no man tells.<br/>
And if you clasp these guardian trees<br/>
Nothing there is to hurt or please;<br/>
Only the dead roof of the forest drops<br/>
Gently down and never stops<br/>
And roofs you in and roofs you under,<br/>
Mute and away from life’s dim thunder;<br/>
And if there come eternal spring<br/>
It is but more disheartening,<br/>
For Autumn takes the Spring and Summer—<br/>
Autumn that is the latest comer—<br/>
With the Springtime’s misty wonder<br/>
And the Summer’s yield of gold,<br/>
Weighs you down and weighs you under<br/>
To where the blackened leaves are mold. . .<br/>
The lone gift of the forest is ever new:<br/>
Eternity where dwell not you.<br/>
The forest, accepting, heeds you not;<br/>
Accepting all-you are forgot.<br/>
If there be leaves on the forest floor,<br/>
Dead leaves there are and nothing more.<br/>
<br/>
Once the forest spoke but now is silent,<br/>
Save in the skyward branches whence no sound<br/>
Seems to touch ear of any man below—<br/>
Or else no longer the man knows how to hear.<br/>
Such men build roofs to keep the forest out,<br/>
Yet all their roofs are built of the forest’s self;<br/>
Only they make the dead tree a shield against the living.<br/>
Such lapsing of the forest then they use<br/>
And turn it into countless lowly dwellings;<br/>
Sometimes they even cut the living down<br/>
To leaven the dead roofs they would erect.<br/>
Though some of these low roofs are lovely there<br/>
Beneath the guardianship of forest trees,<br/>
And some yearn upward as with thought of wings,<br/>
Yet the eyes of the dwellers therein are dark<br/>
To the upper forest and they<br/>
Fearful of the windy freedom of its top.<br/>
They have forgotten<br/>
That the greatest roof is but a banner<br/>
And that it was a tree that made a Cross.<br/></p>
<p class="left">
CHARLES R. MURPHY</p>
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