Maxwell Bodenheim imagines a forest as an ancient, almost human presence. The trees have known darkness as a playful child and sunlight as a tired pilgrim, so they belong to a slower, deeper kind of time than the “little men” who come to fell them. The speaker urges the trees not to react with “startled hatred.” The wood cut from them will become painted buildings, and the men will spend their lives trapped in a “glaring maze of walls” — a harder prison than the forest ever was. In the end, time outlasts the destroyers, and they vanish like rabbits’ feet while the trees remain. The mood is calm, melancholy, and quietly superior: nature is asked to look down on human hurry with the weary, aloof patience of things that last.
Advice to a Forest — Summary
O trees, to whom the darkness is a child Scampering in and out of your long, green beards; O trees, to whom sunlight is a tattered pilgrim Counting his dreams within your hermitage And slipping down the road, in twilight robes; O trees, whose leaves make an incense of sound Reeling with the beat of your caught feet, Do not mingle your tips in startled hatred, When little men come to fell you. These men will saw you into strips Of pointed brooding, blind with paint, But underneath you men will chase The grey staccato of their lives Down a glaring maze of walls Much harder than your own. And when, at last, the deep brown gaze Of stolidly amorous time steals over you, The little men who bit into your hearts Will stray off in a patter of rabbits’ feet. Look down upon these children then With the aloof and weary tolerance That all still things possess, O trees, to whom the darkness was a child Scampering in and out of your long, green beards.