Trees Need Not Walk The Earth

This is a segment from a poem written in 1920 by my father David Ross. For most of my life I only knew the first four lines, and finally found the entire poem on good old Google.

Over the years I have created many tree themed tapestries, and so, inspired by my Dad’s poem, I combined some tree elements with his words.

Here is the entire poem:

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
where they stand
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.


Trees Need Not Walk The Earth, will be released as an open edition print, 13” x 19”.

© Helen Webber, 2010