POPLARS

They are not as the other trees;
Apart, aloof, austere,

Mute of a thousand mysteries,
They guard the crescent year;
Only a waft of fleeting breath
Makes answer to the rain—
A few brief words the poplar saith,
And then is still again.

When oak and elm on sultry eves
Drowse in a full-fed sloth,
When hazels hardly lift their leaves
Out of the undergrowth,

The poplars murmur each to each,
Bending tall brow to brow;
In what remote, immortal speech
Are they conversing now?

To the least movement of the air,
Their supple shapes respond:
Although their visible forms be there,
Their souls dwell far beyond:

Their thoughts, on upper currents borne,
A pilgrimage do go,

Seeking the mountains of the morn,
The springs of afterglow.

In some ethereal, thin Gulf-stream
Of influence most sweet,
Some immemorial drift of dream

That trends about their feet,

The poplars stand; and yet, who knows!
If one should listen well,

Some careless whisper might disclose

The secret poplar-spell.

May Byron.

BLACK POPLARS

I know five poplars on an inland hill

That murmur always with a mournful sound
Of distant waterfalls, while on the ground
No blade is stirring, and the air is still.

And I have often lain there wonder-bound
At the sad music of those trembling leaves,
For in that hour the quicken'd soul receives
High converse with the mystery profound
Of human sorrow and the tears of things.

So I return more kind, more gently wise,
More filled with that sympathy which brings
A look of love and hope to tearful eyes,
Lest it should seem the world's vast load of pain
Is measureless, and love and hope are vain.

"Centaur."

TO A PINE-TREE

If I could stand in such a plain,
With such bright sap in every vein;
Could throw upon so blue an air,
Branches so light and strong and fair;

If I could sink my roots so deep
In darkness where the spirits creep,
So broadly base, so firmly rear
My stem in such an atmosphere;

If I could balance and reveal
So utterly from head to heel

The music I was born to be,

In strophe and antistrophe;

Thou 'dst not more nobly stand and shine

Than I, proud Atlantean pine.

Philip Henry Savage.

THE FOREST PINE

A HUNDRED autumns fallen in fire
To dust and mould

Have faded from their perished gold
To throne thee higher,

O Titan pine, that soarest straight
From ground to sky without a mate,
Like one desire.

Dark is the hollow as a cup

Of shadow immense,

Of daylight-daunting dimness, whence
Thou springest up

Far into light, to take thy fill

Of splendour, solitary in still

Magnificence.

Leaves of the low brake hide a stir

Of small soft things:

Life, busy in flit of secret wings

And slinking fur,

Pricks buried seeds that upward thrust,

And green through germinating dust

Triumphant stings.

Thou hidest all the sappy stream

That in thee swells;

Motionless fibre nothing tells:

And thou dost seem

To tower in glorious ignorance

Of earth's small stir and chafe, a trance, A soaring dream!

And in a trance thou holdest me
With bated will;

And I am still, as thou are still,
My spirit free,

My body charm-dissolved to naught
But the vibration of a thought,

If thought could be.

O hush! within the blood is felt
An airy fear,

A faltering; and the heart can hear
The silence melt

To something frailer than a sound
Borne from the wide horizon's bound
To the inward ear.

Slowly, ah! slowly, a hush begins,
A trembling, where

Those branches sleep on golden air,
And gradual wins

A voice, a music, a long surge,
Sweet as a song, sad as a dirge,
Sighed out like prayer!

The singer knows not what he sings.

A lonely sound

Comes trembling through him from profound

Aerial springs.

The songs, the sighs, the world exiled,

Seek him, and in his heart-throbs wild
Still their wild wings.

Laurence Binyon.

MY PRETTY ROSE-TREE

A Flower was offer'd to me,

Such a flower as May never bore; But I said, "I've a Pretty Rose-tree," And I passed the sweet flower o'er.

Then I went to my Pretty Rose-tree,
To tend her by day and by night,
But my Rose turn'd away with jealousy,
And her thorns were my only delight.

William Blake.

IN THE BOHEMIAN REDWOODS

Silent above, with seraph eyes

That peer amid the fronded spars,

More intimate, more friendly wise,
More tender glow the eternal stars.

Lyric beneath, with echoing blast
Of fellowship Arcadian,

More cosmic-strange, more pagan-vast,
More stellar glow the hearts of Man.

Oracular, aboriginal

Beyond our dreams, the psychic trees Conspire their awful ritual

Of sempiternal silences;

Till solemn now, with lunar state,
The Druid drama slowly dawns,
Where cowled satyrs consecrate
A monastery-of the fauns.

Lit by dance and starry scroll,
Aloof, familiar, lone, divine
With Delphic laughter of the soul,
The temples of To-morrow shine!

Percy Mackaye.