Loveliest of Trees, the Cherry Now

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1. The Cherry Trees The cherry trees bend over and are shedding, On the old road where all that passed are dead, Their petals, strewing the grass as for a wedding This early May morn when there is none to wed....
2. There Was a Cherry-Tree There was a cherry-tree. Its bloomy snows Cool even now the fevered sight that knows No more its airy visions of pure joy As when you were a boy. There was a cherry-tree. The Bluejay sat His blue against its white O blue as jet He seemed there then! But now Whoever knew He was […]...
3. Cherry – Tree Inn The rafters are open to sun, moon, and star, Thistles and nettles grow high in the bar The chimneys are crumbling, the log fires are dead, And green mosses spring from the hearthstone instead. The voices are silent, the bustle and din, For the railroad hath ruined the Cherry-tree Inn. Save the glimmer of stars, […]...
4. CHERRY RIPE Cherry-ripe, ripe, ripe, I cry, Full and fair ones; come, and buy: If so be you ask me where They do grow? I answer, there Where my Julia’s lips do smile; There’s the land, or cherry-isle; Whose plantations fully show All the year where cherries grow....
5. Cherry-Time Cherries of the night are riper Than the cherries pluckt at noon Gather to your fairy piper When he pipes his magic tune: Merry, merry, Take a cherry; Mine are sounder, Mine are rounder, Mine are sweeter For the eater Under the moon. And you’ll be fairies soon. In the cherry pluckt at night, With […]...
6. Imitated From The Japanese A most astonishing thing Seventy years have I lived; (Hurrah for the flowers of Spring, For Spring is here again.) Seventy years have I lived No ragged beggar-man, Seventy years have I lived, Seventy years man and boy, And never have I danced for joy....
7. Tom Beatty I was a lawyer like Harmon Whitney Or Kinsey Keene or Garrison Standard, For I tried the rights of property, Although by lamp-light, for thirty years, In that poker room in the opera house. And I say to you that Life’s a gambler Head and shoulders above us all. No mayor alive can close the […]...
8. Birthday (16th January 1949) I thank whatever gods may be For all the happiness that’s mine; That I am festive, fit and free To savour women, wit and wine; That I may game of golf enjoy, And have a formidable drive: In short, that I’m a gay old boy Though I be Seventy-and-five. My daughter thinks. […]...
9. The Petit Vieux “Sow your wild oats in your youth,” so we’re always told; But I say with deeper sooth: “Sow them when you’re old.” I’ll be wise till I’m about seventy or so: Then, by Gad! I’ll blossom out as an ancient beau. I’ll assume a dashing air, laugh with loud Ha! ha! . . . How […]...
10. Cherry bomb I said goodbye and went to bed to die; I never knew that they had lied – was quite Surprised they didn’t seem to care, I agonised, Refused to cry although in time the tears Were quietly shed. When I awoke and found My sight, listened to the sound of night’s Retreat, got to my […]...
11. Cavalier Tunes: Marching Along Kentish Sir Byng stood for his King, Bidding the crop-headed Parliament swing: And, pressing a troop unable to stoop And see the rogues flourish and honest folk droop, Marched them along, fifty score strong, Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song. God for King Charles! Pym and such carles To the Devil that prompts ’em their treasonous […]...
12. At San Sebastian The Countess sprawled beside the sea As naked a she well could be; Indeed her only garments were A “G” string and a brassière Her washerwoman was amazed, And at the lady gazed and gazed, – From billowy-bosom swell To navel like a pink sea shell. The Countess has of robes three score, She doffs […]...
13. The Missal Makers To visit the Escurial We took a motor bus, And there a guide mercurial Took charge of us. He showed us through room after room, And talked hour after hour, Of place, crypt and royal tomb, Of pomp and power. But in bewilderment of grace What pleased me most of all Were ancient missals proud […]...
14. Twenty Years Hence Twenty years hence my eyes may grow If not quite dim, yet rather so, Still yours from others they shall know Twenty years hence. Twenty years hence though it may hap That I be called to take a nap In a cool cell where thunderclap Was never heard, There breathe but o’er my arch of […]...
15. A Spring Piece Left In The Middle Taut, thick fingers punch The teeth of my typewriter. Three words are down on paper in capitals: SPRING SPRING SPRING… And me poet, proofreader, The man who’s forced to read Two thousand bad lines every day for two liras Why, since spring has come, am I still sitting here like a ragged black chair? My […]...
16. Good Friday O my chief good, How shall I measure out thy blood? How shall I count what thee befell, And each grief tell? Shall I thy woes Number according to thy foes? Or, since one star show’d thy first breath, Shall all thy death? Or shall each leaf, Which falls in Autumn, score a grief? Or […]...
17. Orpheus with his Lute Made Trees Orpheus with his lute made trees, And the mountain tops that freeze, Bow themselves, when he did sing: To his music plants and flowers Ever sprung; as sun and showers There had made a lasting spring. Everything that heard him play, Even the billows of the sea, Hung their heads, and then lay by. In […]...
18. Trees In The Garden Ah in the thunder air How still the trees are! And the lime-tree, lovely and tall, every leaf silent Hardly looses even a last breath of perfume. And the ghostly, creamy coloured little tree of leaves White, ivory white among the rambling greens How evanescent, variegated elder, she hesitates on the green grass As if, […]...
19. 339. Song-O for ane an' twenty, Tam Chorus.-An’ O for ane an’ twenty, Tam! And hey, sweet ane an’ twenty, Tam! I’ll learn my kin a rattlin’ sang, An’ I saw ane an’ twenty, Tam. THEY snool me sair, and haud me down, An’ gar me look like bluntie, Tam; But three short years will soon wheel roun’, An’ then comes ane […]...
20. ON HIMSELF A wearied pilgrim I have wander’d here, Twice five-and-twenty, bate me but one year; Long I have lasted in this world; ’tis true But yet those years that I have lived, but few. Who by his gray hairs doth his lustres tell, Lives not those years, but he that lives them well: One man has […]...
21. Learning the Trees Before you can learn the trees, you have to learn The language of the trees. That’s done indoors, Out of a book, which now you think of it Is one of the transformations of a tree. The words themselves are a delight to learn, You might be in a foreign land of terms Like samara, […]...
22. "I Love You Sweatheart&quot A man risked his life to write the words. A man hung upside down (an idiot friend Holding his legs?) with spray paint To write the words on a girder fifty feet above A highway. And his beloved, The next morning driving to work…? His words are not (meant to be) so unique. Does she […]...
23. Justice Arnett It is true, fellow citizens, That my old docket lying there for years On a shelf above my head and over The seat of justice, I say it is true That docket had an iron rim Which gashed my baldness when it fell (Somehow I think it was shaken loose By the heave of the […]...
24. Leaves Compared With Flowers A tree’s leaves may be ever so good, So may its bar, so may its wood; But unless you put the right thing to its root It never will show much flower or fruit. But I may be one who does not care Ever to have tree bloom or bear. Leaves for smooth and bark […]...
25. New And Old I and new love, in all its living bloom, Sat vis-à-vis, while tender twilight hours Went softly by us, treading as on flowers. Then suddenly I saw within the room The old love, long since lying in its tomb. It dropped the cerecloth from its fleshless face And smiled on me, with a remembered grace […]...
26. City Trees The trees along this city street, Save for the traffic and the trains, Would make a sound as thin and sweet As trees in country lanes. And people standing in their shade Out of a shower, undoubtedly Would hear such music as is made Upon a country tree. Oh, little leaves that are so dumb […]...
27. My Cross I wrote a poem to the moon But no one noticed it; Although I hoped that late or soon Someone would praise a bit Its purity and grace forlone, Its beauty tulip-cool… But as my poem died still-born, I felt a fool. I wrote a verse of vulgar trend Spiced with an oath or two; […]...
28. Shearing With a Hoe The track that led to Carmody’s is choked and overgrown, The suckers of the stringybark have made the place their own; The mountain rains have cut the track that once we used to know When first we rode to Carmody’s, a score of years ago. The shearing shed at Carmody’s was slab and stringybark, The […]...
29. A Ballad Of The Trees And The Master Into the woods my Master went, Clean forspent, forspent. Into the woods my Master came, Forspent with love and shame. But the olives they were not blind to Him, The little gray leaves were kind to Him: The thorn-tree had a mind to Him When into the woods He came. Out of the woods my […]...
30. THE SINGING SCHOOL The Poetry School, The Poetry Book Society, The Poetry Business: So much poetry about you’d think I’d want to shout, “Hurray, hurray, Every day’s Poetry Day!” but I don’t and you don’t either- You know its flim-flam on the ether, grants for Jack-the-lads Of both sexes, poets who’ve never been seen in a little magazine […]...
31. Memorial To D. C (Vassar College, 1918) O, loveliest throat of all sweet throats, Where now no more the music is, With hands that wrote you little notes I write you little elegies!...
32. Theme For English B The instructor said, Go home and write a page tonight. And let that page come out of you Then, it will be true. I wonder if it’s that simple? I am twenty-two, colored, born in Winston-Salem. I went to school there, then Durham, then here To this college on the hill above Harlem. I am […]...
33. Light Between the Trees Long, long, long the trail Through the brooding forest-gloom, Down the shadowy, lonely vale Into silence, like a room Where the light of life has fled, And the jealous curtains close Round the passionless repose Of the silent dead. Plod, plod, plod away, Step by step in mouldering moss; Thick branches bar the day Over […]...
34. Birthday (Autobiography) Seventy years ago my mother labored to bear me, A twelve-pound baby with a big head, Her first, it was plain torture. Finally they used the forceps And dragged me out, with one prong In my right eye, and slapped and banged me until I breathed. I am not particularly grateful for it. As to […]...
35. A Hedge Of Rubber Trees The West Village by then was changing; before long The rundown brownstones at its farthest edge Would have slipped into trendier hands. She lived, Impervious to trends, behind a potted hedge of Rubber trees, with three cats, a canary-refuse From whose cage kept sifting down and then Germinating, a yearning seedling choir, around The saucers […]...
36. Aspens All day and night, save winter, every weather, Above the inn, the smithy and the shop, The aspens at the cross-roads talk together Of rain, until their last leaves fall from the top. Out of the blacksmith’s cavern comes the ringing Of hammer, shoe and anvil; out of the inn The clink, the hum, the […]...
37. Trees Against The Sky Pines against the sky, Pluming the purple hill; Pines. . . and I wonder why, Heart, you quicken and thrill? Wistful heart of a boy, Fill with a strange sweet joy, Lifting to Heaven nigh – Pines against the sky. Palms against the sky, Failing the hot, hard blue; Stark on the beach I lie, […]...
38. The Two Trees Beloved, gaze in thine own heart, The holy tree is growing there; From joy the holy branches start, And all the trembling flowers they bear. The changing colours of its fruit Have dowered the stars with metry light; The surety of its hidden root Has planted quiet in the night; The shaking of its leafy […]...
39. The Oven Bird There is a singer everyone has heard, Loud, a mid-summer and a mid-wood bird, Who makes the solid tree trunks sound again. He says that leaves are old and that for flowers Mid-summer is to spring as one to ten. He says the early petal-fall is past When pear and cherry bloom went down in […]...
40. The Sudden Light And The Trees My neighbor was a biker, a pusher, a dog And wife beater. In bad dreams I killed him And once, in the consequential light of day, I called the Humane Society About Blue, his dog. They took her away And I readied myself, a baseball bat Inside my door. That night I hear his wife […]...