It’s springtime and school competitions are blooming, at least in our little world. Today’s extravaganza involved the granddaughter getting on a bus (exciting for a 3rd grader who does not ordinarily ride school buses) and traveling to a neighboring school for a Fine Arts Competition. The definition of Fine Arts was loose and included spelling bees, poetry recitation, and something called Sword Drill. This last event involves flashing specific biblical citations and seeing which competitor can find them in the King James Bible, jump up, and be the first to proclaim their opening words. Apparently elementary boys gravitate to this challenge, so I suspect it got pretty aggressive!
Granddaughter Patti was to recite a poem. She selected Woodman, Spare That Tree! from a list of her favorites that included Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening (not quite spring-time enough), Jabberwocky (a hard sell, not to mention difficult to learn), Tiger, Tiger Burning Bright (takes more life-experience to understand than the judges would assume a 3rd grader has) and In Flanders Field (same concern as Tiger, Tiger).
In one of my overzealous efforts to help her, I began digging out background on Woodman, Spare That Tree! wherever I could find it. To my surprise, I found multiple results from internet terms labeling this 1830 poem as “the first ecology poem.” Other descriptions lauded its social and environmental sensibilities.
Woodman, Spare That Tree! may be a lot of things, but it is not a cry for woodsmen to stop cutting down trees!
Rather, it is memoir of the poet’s heart, George Pope Morris (1802-1864), wherein a particular tree planted by his who-knows-how-long-ago forefather had played a role in his life. The tree had sheltered him (and surely begged to be climbed endlessly); it once provided shade for his sisters at play; and it made a perfect spot for his mother regularly to kiss him and his father to pat his hand. With all that, the tree managed to host birds who carried their song to heaven. To no one’s surprise, the poet’s heartstrings were wrapped as tightly around the tree as its bark. Consequently, the woodsman in question needed to pack up his axe and move on!
The branches of this poem spread a bit differently than I expected. It invited song settings, as well as dramatic renderings. The most distinct realization I found involves a cartoon rendition featuring Elmer Fudd! Before that, though, a humorous setting by Irving Berlin seems to have been popular, recorded in an almost country-music style on His Master’s Voice 78 in 1947 by Phil Harris and His Orchestra.
But the truest setting, stylistically, springs from the pages of an 1837 parlor song written by the Jewish-English baritone Henry Russell (c. 1812-1900). Russell wrote songs from his early childhood that, more than once, brought him significant financial success. His bejeweled expression of Woodman, Spare That Tree! reflects an oeuvre that affected the development of English-language sentimental song in the 1830s and 40s. In fact, Russell was an on American tour in 1837 promoting his songs when he discovered Morris’s poem in the New York Mirror Magazine and set it to music. It became a hit.
Upon first hearing Russell’s setting I confess to being underwhelmed. The sweetness of the music, formulated in verse form, where a predictable, filigreed piano section introduces each stanza, allows for little nuance in presenting the dynamic words. With a plain, solid melody, the song’s few flourishes fall awkwardly on the text. But such was the style of sentimental tunes in the 1830s. Furthermore, upon my fourth or so listening, I began to feel fondly towards the song. Now, at least four more hearings later, I’m unable to get it out of my head.
Fortunately, though, the poem outlasted all musical settings. Today it stands alone, gracing decades’ worth of poetry collections, fueling school recitations, and attesting to the precious legacy that a single thing—in this case, a tree—can embody. If allowed to stand, that legacy has the power to bless the next generation.
None of that assessment, though, has any connection with a trendy environmental doctrine. Deforestation is a complex, pressing issue, and not just in rain forests far away. Anyone living in a vital metroplex area watches swaths of woods regularly be bulldozed for superficially elegant, cheaply built subdivisions. Green space disappears, and we know the consequences of that, beginning with the way possums, deer, bobcats and other wildlife are forced to seek refuge in residential neighborhoods.
But that is not the story expressed in Woodman, Spare That Tree! If alive today, Morris might write poems expressing environmental concerns, or he might not. But in 1830, his concern was producing good poetry and working through a host of avenues to bring it to a general population eager to read it on the pages of the burgeoning magazines shaping English-language literature and culture in the early 19th century.
I do think Morris would like the idea of children still voicing this poem. His spirit seems to have been joyous and unfettered. In fact, a contemporary wrote: “He is just what poets would be if they sang like birds without criticism.” For your reading pleasure, here is Woodman, Spare That Tree!
Woodman, spare that tree!
Touch not a single bough!
In youth it sheltered me,
And I’ll protect it now.
‘Twas my forefather’s hand
That placed it near his cot;
There, woodman, let it stand,
Thy ax shall harm it not.That old familiar tree,
Whose glory and renown
Are spread o’er land and sea—
And wouldst thou hew it down?
Woodman, forbear thy stroke!
Cut not its earth-bound ties;
Oh, spare that agèd oak
Now towering to the skies!When but an idle boy,
I sought its grateful shade;
In all their gushing joy
Here, too, my sisters played.
My mother kissed me here;
My father pressed my hand—
Forgive this foolish tear,
But let that old oak stand.My heart-strings round thee cling,
Close as thy bark, old friend!
Here shall the wild-bird sing,
And still thy branches bend.
Old tree! the storm still brave!
And, woodman, leave the spot;
While I’ve a hand to save,
Thy ax shall harm it not.
