In his Specimen Days (1882), poet Walt Whitman announces, in "The Lesson of a Tree," that he is about to talk about "his favourite poplar." What he proceeds to say could apply, however, to any tree anywhere:
"How strong, vital, enduring! how doubly eloquent! What suggestions of imperturbability and being, as against the human trait of mere seeming. Then the qualities, almost emotional, palpably artistic, heroic, of a tree; so innocent and harmless, yet so savage. It is, yet says nothing.”
