AGING BUT ALWAYS GROWING
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was one of the great poets of the 19th century with works such as “Evangeline” and “The Song of Hiawatha.” In the midst of his successes, though, were two great sorrows — the death of his first wife in Holland, and then, years later, the loss of his second wife in a fire at home. Once, not long before his death at age seventy-five, someone asked him how he continued to write so beautifully and remain so vigorous. Longfellow responded by pointing to an apple tree that was in full bloom and said, “That is a very old apple tree, but the blossoms this year seem more beautiful than ever before. That old tree grows a little new wood each year, and I suppose it is out of the new wood that these blossoms come. Like the apple tree, I try to grow a little new wood each year.” From The Home Stretch by Dale Evans Rogers…
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