The solemn grove lifting its green top into the heavens,
beside that motionless army of ancient stones, adds a sweeter note than
they can give to the great harmony. It is a note, speaking not alone of
the Creator's power, but of His wisdom too. Here is life and growth. Here
are adaptations and stages of progress. From the minutest germination,
from the slenderest stem, from the smallest trembling leaf to the hugest
trunks and the highest overshadowing branches, this vegetable
organization, verdant, pale, crimson, in changeable colors, runs; stopping
short only with Alpine summits or polar posts, swiftly and softly clothing
again the rents and gashes in the ground made by the stroke of labor or
the wheels of war--blooming into the golden and ruddy harvest on the stalk
and the bough, even overpassing the salt shore, to line the dismal and
unvisited caves of the deep with peculiar varieties of growth; and forth
into our hands from the foaming brine delicate and strangely beautiful
leaves and slight ramifications of matchless tints and proportions.
But the Psalmist summons a third order of beings to contribute its
melodious share to this hallelujah; and that is the living and conscious,
though irrational tribes.
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