for our present purpose:

I speak for each no-tongued tree
That, spring by spring, doth nobler be,
And dumbly and most wistfully
His mighty prayerful arms outspreads
Above men's oft-unheeding heads,
And his big blessing downward sheds.
I speak for all-shaped blooms and leaves,
Lichens on stones and moss on eaves,
Grasses and grains in ranks and sheaves;
Broad-fronded ferns and keen-leaved canes,
And briery mazes bounding lanes,
And marsh-plants, thirsty-cupped for rains,
And milky stems and sugary veins;
For every long-armed woman-vine
That round a piteous tree doth twine;
For passionate odors, and divine
Pistils, and petals crystalline;

* * * * *

All tree-sounds, rustlings of pine-cones,
Wind-sighings, doves' melodious moans,
And night's unearthly undertones;
All placid lakes and waveless deeps,
All cool reposing mountain-steeps,
Vale-calms and tranquil lotos-sleeps;--
Yea, all fair forms, and sounds, and lights,
And warmths, and mysteries, and mights,
Of Nature's utmost depths and heights,
--These doth my timid tongue present,
Their mouthpiece and leal instrument
And servant, all love-eloquent.

You see, to voice this message a mood born of all the "warmths and
mysteries and mights of Nature's utmost depths and heights" must take
possession of you, and you must yield your instrument to the expression
of that mood. Then watch, watch, watch the color of the tone change as
the voice, starting with the clear flute-note, follows sympathetically
the varying phases of Nature's face which the poet has so
sympathetically painted. And now, after a "thrilling calm," the flute
yields its place to a sister instrument, and the tone must change its
_timbre_ to the reed note of the clarionet. In the "melting" message of
that instrument we find two passages which afford the voice chance for a
most vivid contrast in color. Beginning with the line, "Now comes a
suitor with sharp, prying eye," read the two descriptions which follow,
lending your voice to the atmosphere of each:

_ ... Here, you Lady, if you'll sell I'll buy:
Come, heart for heart--a trade? What! weeping? why?_
Shame on such wooer's dapper mercery!
I would my lover kneeling at my feet
In humble manliness should cry, _O sweet!
I know not if thy heart my heart will greet:
I ask