Edgar Allan Poe's Trees

from a photo by Jerzy Strzelecki
Since I've been posting about trees the last couple of days, here's an interesting passage from Poe's "The Island of the Fay." Poe's better known for horror and mystery, of course, but I like his nature writing too. ("Fay" means fairy.)
It wasduring one of my lonely journeyings, amid a far distant region of mountainlocked within mountain, and sad rivers and melancholy tarn writhing or sleepingwithin all—that I chanced upon a certain rivulet and island. I came upon themsuddenly in the leafy June, and threw myself upon the turf, beneath thebranches of an unknown odorous shrub, that I might doze as I contemplated thescene. I felt that thus only should I look upon it—such was the character ofphantasm which it wore.
On allsides—save to the west, where the sun was about sinking—arose the verdant wallsof the forest. The little river which turned sharply in its course, and wasthus immediately lost to sight, seemed to have no exit from its prison, but tobe absorbed by the deep green foliage of the trees to the east—while in theopposite quarter (so it appeared to me as I lay at length and glanced upward)there poured down noiselessly and continuously into the valley, a rich goldenand crimson waterfall from the sunset fountains of the sky.
About midwayin the short vista which my dreamy vision took in, one small circular island,profusely verdured, reposed upon the bosom of the stream.

So blendedbank and shadow thereThat eachseemed pendulous in air

—somirror-like was the glassy water, that it was scarcely possible to say at whatpoint upon the slope of the emerald turf its crystal dominion began.
My positionenabled me to include in a single view both the eastern and western extremitiesof the islet; and I observed a singularly-marked difference in their aspects.The latter was all one radiant harem of garden beauties. It glowed and blushedbeneath the eyes of the slant sunlight, and fairly laughed with flowers. Thegrass was short, springy, sweet-scented, and Asphodel-interspersed. The treeswere lithe, mirthful, erect—bright, slender, and graceful,—of eastern figureand foliage, with bark smooth, glossy, and parti-colored. There seemed a deepsense of life and joy about all; and although no airs blew from out theheavens, yet every thing had motion through the gentle sweepings to and fro ofinnumerable butterflies, that might have been mistaken for tulips with wings.
The other oreastern end of the isle was whelmed in the blackest shade. A sombre, yetbeautiful and peaceful gloom here pervaded all things. The trees were dark incolor, and mournful in form and attitude, wreathing themselves into sad,solemn, and spectral shapes that conveyed ideas of mortal sorrow and untimelydeath. The grass wore the deep tint of the cypress, and the heads of its bladeshung droopingly, and hither and thither among it were many small unsightlyhillocks, low and narrow, and not very long, that had the aspect of graves, butwere not; although over and all about them the rue and the rosemary clambered.The shade of the trees fell heavily upon the water, and seemed to bury itselftherein, impregnating the depths of the element with darkness. I fancied thateach shadow, as the sun descended lower and lower, separated itself sullenlyfrom the trunk that gave it birth, and thus became absorbed by the stream;while other shadows issued momently from the trees, taking the place of theirpredecessors thus entombed.
This idea,having once seized upon my fancy, greatly excited it, and I lost myselfforthwith in revery. "If ever island were enchanted," said I tomyself, "this is it. This is the haunt of the few gentle Fays who remainfrom the wreck of the race. Are these green tombs theirs?—or do they yield uptheir sweet lives as mankind yield up their own? In dying, do they not ratherwaste away mournfully, rendering unto God, little by little, their existence,as these trees render up shadow after shadow, exhausting their substance untodissolution? What the wasting tree is to the water that imbibes its shade,growing thus blacker by what it preys upon, may not the life of the Fay be tothe death which engulfs it?"
As I thusmused, with half-shut eyes, while the sun sank rapidly to rest, and eddyingcurrents careered round and round the island, bearing upon their bosom large,dazzling, white flakes of the bark of the sycamore-flakes which, in theirmultiform positions upon the water, a quick imagination might have convertedinto any thing it pleased, while I thus mused, it appeared to me that the formof one of those very Fays about whom I had been pondering made its way slowlyinto the darkness from out the light at the western end of the island. Shestood erect in a singularly fragile canoe, and urged it with the mere phantomof an oar. While within the influence of the lingering sunbeams, her attitudeseemed indicative of joy—but sorrow deformed it as she passed within the shade.Slowly she glided along, and at length rounded the islet and re-entered theregion of light. "The revolution which has just been made by the Fay,"continued I, musingly, "is the cycle of the brief year of her life. Shehas floated through her winter and through her summer. She is a year nearerunto Death; for I did not fail to see that, as she came into the shade, hershadow fell from her, and was swallowed up in the dark water, making itsblackness more black."
And againthe boat appeared and the Fay, but about the attitude of the latter there wasmore of care and uncertainty and less of elastic joy. She floated again fromout the light and into the gloom (which deepened momently) and again her shadowfell from her into the ebony water, and became absorbed into its blackness. Andagain and again she made the circuit of the island, (while the sun rushed downto his slumbers), and at each issuing into the light there was more sorrowabout her person, while it grew feebler and far fainter and more indistinct,and at each passage into the gloom there fell from her a darker shade, whichbecame whelmed in a shadow more black. But at length when the sun had utterlydeparted, the Fay, now the mere ghost of her former self, went disconsolatelywith her boat into the region of the ebony flood, and that she issued thence atall I cannot say, for darkness fell over an things and I beheld her magicalfigure no more.