Pines

 
Pines

by Joh Ruskin from Mordern Painters
 
The pine, placed nearly always among scenes disordered and desolate, brings into them all possible elements of order and precision.  Lowland trees may lean to this side and that, though it is but a meadow breeze that bends them, or a bank of cowslips from which their trunks lean aslope.  But let storm and avalanche do their worst, and let the pine find only a ledge of vertical precipice to cling to, it will nevertheless grow straight.  Thrust a rod from its last shoot down the stem; it shall point to the center of the earth as long as the tree lives.  It may be welll also for lowland branches to reach thither and thither for what they need, and to take all kinds of irregular shape and extension.  But the pine is trained to need nothing and endure everything.  It is resolvedly whole, selft-contained, desiring nothing but rightness, content with restricted completion.  Tall or short, it will be straight.