Ode To a Chestnut on the Ground

Related poetry:

1. A Solitary Chestnut Il buon tempo verrà! A solitary chestnut, Bold in the cold, Hibernating under A gigantic white sheet Is perseverance Keeping busy To welcome The coming Of Spring...
2. The Leaf And The Tree When will you learn, myself, to be A dying leaf on a living tree? Budding, swelling, growing strong, Wearing green, but not for long, Drawing sustenance from air, That other leaves, and you not there, May bud, and at the autumn’s call Wearing russet, ready to fall? Has not this trunk a deed to do […]...
3. The Chestnut Casts His Flambeaux The chestnut casts his flambeaux, and the flowers Stream from the hawthorn on the wind away, The doors clap to, the pane is blind with showers. Pass me the can, lad; there’s an end of May. There’s one spoilt spring to scant our mortal lot, One season ruined of your little store. May will be […]...
4. Encounter Those who have touched it or been touched by it Or brushed by something that the vine has brushed, Or burning it, have stood where the sly smoke Has touched them-Know the meaning of its name. The leaf is smooth. Its green is innocence. A clean, unblemished leaf, glossy when young. A leaf the unobserving […]...
5. These Green-Going-to-Yellow This year, I’m raising the emotional ante, Putting my face In the leaves to be stepped on, Seeing myself among them, that is; That is, likening Leaf-vein to artery, leaf to flesh, The passage of a leaf in autumn To the passage of autumn, Branch-tip and winter spaces To possibilities, and possibility To God. Even […]...
6. A Seed See how a Seed, which Autumn flung down, And through the Winter neglected lay, Uncoils two little green leaves and two brown, With tiny root taking hold on the clay As, lifting and strengthening day by day, It pushes red branchless, sprouts new leaves, And cell after cell the Power in it weaves Out of […]...
7. The Seed I was a seed that fell In silver dew; And nobody could tell, For no one knew; No one could tell my fate, As I grew tall; None visioned me with hate, No, none at all. A sapling I became, Blest by the sun; No rumour of my shame Had any one. Oh I was […]...
8. 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 […]...
9. Winter Sleep When against earth a wooden heel Clicks as loud as stone on steel, When stone turns flour instead of flakes, And frost bakes clay as fire bakes, When the hard-bitten fields at last Crack like iron flawed in the cast, When the world is wicked and cross and old, I long to be quit of […]...
10. Paradise Seed Where is the seed Of the tree felled, Of the forest burned, Or living root Under ash and cinders? From woven bud What last leaf strives Into life, last Shrivelled flower? Is fruit of our harvest, Our long labour Dust to the core? To what far, fair land Borne on the wind What winged seed […]...
11. Four Haiku Spring: A hill without a name Veiled in morning mist. The beginning of autumn: Sea and emerald paddy Both the same green. The winds of autumn Blow: yet still green The chestnut husks. A flash of lightning: Into the gloom Goes the heron’s cry....
12. Off to the Fishing Ground There’s a piping wind from a sunrise shore Blowing over a silver sea, There’s a joyous voice in the lapsing tide That calls enticingly; The mist of dawn has taken flight To the dim horizon’s bound, And with wide sails set and eager hearts We’re off to the fishing ground. Ho, comrades mine, how that […]...
13. An Antiquated Tree An Antiquated Tree Is cherished of the Crow Because that Junior Foliage is disrespectful now To venerable Birds Whose Corporation Coat Would decorate Oblivion’s Remotest Consulate....
14. Three Songs Of Shattering I The first rose on my rose-tree Budded, bloomed, and shattered, During sad days when to me Nothing mattered. Grief of grief has drained me clean; Still it seems a pity No one saw,-it must have been Very pretty. II Let the little birds sing; Let the little lambs play; Spring is here; and so […]...
15. The Indian Burying Ground In spite of all the learn’d have said; I still my old opinion keep, The posture, that we give the dead, Points out the soul’s eternal sleep. Not so the ancients of these lands The Indian, when from life releas’d Again is seated with his friends, And shares gain the joyous feast. His imag’d birds, […]...
16. Putting in the Seed You come to fetch me from my work to-night When supper’s on the table, and we’ll see If I can leave off burying the white Soft petals fallen from the apple tree (Soft petals, yes, but not so barren quite, Mingled with these, smooth bean and wrinkled pea); And go along with you ere you […]...
17. A Late Walk When I go up through the mowing field, The headless aftermath, Smooth-laid like thatch with the heavy dew, Half closes the garden path. And when I come to the garden ground, The whir of sober birds Up from the tangle of withered weeds Is sadder than any words A tree beside the wall stands bare, […]...
18. Melmillo Three and thirty birds there stood In an elder in a wood; Called Melmillo flew off three, Leaving thirty in the tree; Called Melmillo nine now gone, And the boughs held twenty-one; Called Melmillo and eighteen Left but three to nod and preen; Called Melmillo three two one Now of birds were feathers none. Then […]...
19. Off the Ground Three jolly Farmers Once bet a pound Each dance the others would Off the ground. Out of their coats They slipped right soon, And neat and nicesome Put each his shoon. One Two Three! And away they go, Not too fast, And not too slow; Out from the elm-tree’s Noonday shadow, Into the sun And […]...
20. Dedication For A Plot Of Ground This plot of ground Facing the waters of this inlet Is dedicated to the living presence of Emily Dickinson Wellcome Who was born in England; married; Lost her husband and with Her five year old son Sailed for New York in a two-master; Was driven to the Azores; Ran adrift on Fire Island shoal, Met […]...
21. Encounter In The Chestnut Avenue He felt the entrance’s green darkness Wrapped cooly round him like a silken cloak That he was still accepting and arranging; When at the opposite transparent end, far off, Through green sunlight, as through green window panes, Whitely a solitary shape Flared up, long remaining distant And then finally, the downdriving light Boiling over it […]...
22. The Death of the Flowers The melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year, Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows brown and sere. Heaped in the hollows of the grove, the autumn leaves lie dead; They rustle to the eddying gust, and to the rabbit’s tread; The robin and the wren are flown, and from the shrubs […]...
23. A Song of Enchantment A song of Enchantment I sang me there, In a green-green wood, by waters fair, Just as the words came up to me I sang it under the wild wood tree. Widdershins turned I, singing it low, Watching the wild birds come and go; No cloud in the deep dark blue to be seen Under […]...
24. The Balance Wheel Where I waved at the sky And waited your love through a February sleep, I saw birds swinging in, watched them multiply Into a tree, weaving on a branch, cradling a keep In the arms of April sprung from the south to occupy This slow lap of land, like cogs of some balance wheel. I […]...
25. A Japanese Wood-Carving High up above the open, welcoming door It hangs, a piece of wood with colours dim. Once, long ago, it was a waving tree And knew the sun and shadow through the leaves Of forest trees, in a thick eastern wood. The winter snows had bent its branches down, The spring had swelled its buds […]...
26. And Yet The Books And yet the books will be there on the shelves, separate beings, That appeared once, still wet As shining chestnuts under a tree in autumn, And, touched, coddled, began to live In spite of fires on the horizon, castles blown up, Tribes on the march, planets in motion. “We are, ” they said, even as […]...
27. Seed From star to star, from sun and spring and leaf, And almost audible flowers whose sound is silence, And in the common meadows, springs the seed of life. Now the lilies open, and the rose Released by summer from the harmless graves That, centuries deep, are in the air we breathe, And in our earth, […]...
28. Hymn To Life The hair falling on your forehead suddenly lifted. Suddenly something stirred on the ground. The trees are whispering in the dark. Your bare arms will be cold. Far off where we can’t see, the moon must be rising. It hasn’t reached us yet, slipping through the leaves to light up your shoulder. But I know […]...
29. She dwelleth in the Ground She dwelleth in the Ground Where Daffodils abide Her Maker Her Metropolis The Universe Her Maid To fetch Her Grace and Hue And Fairness and Renown The Firmament’s To Pluck Her And fetch Her Thee be mine...
30. PEACEFUL GROUND Cool Morning spit on bladed grass. A Thousand silky fingers tickling toes. The strong scent of natures freshly cut hair. Mans spiritual stamping groung toward inner Peace....
31. Go Plant a Tree God, what a joy it is to plant a tree, And from the sallow earth to watch it rise, Lifting its emerald branches to the skies In silent adoration; and to see Its strength and glory waxing with each spring. Yes, ’tis a goodly, and a gladsome thing To plant a tree. Nature has many […]...
32. About The Sheltered Garden Ground ABOUT the sheltered garden ground The trees stand strangely still. The vale ne’er seemed so deep before, Nor yet so high the hill. An awful sense of quietness, A fulness of repose, Breathes from the dewy garden-lawns, The silent garden rows. As the hoof-beats of a troop of horse Heard far across a plain, A […]...
33. In Memoriam A. H. H.: 11. Calm is the morn without a sound Calm is the morn without a sound, Calm as to suit a calmer grief, And only thro’ the faded leaf The chestnut pattering to the ground: Calm and deep peace on this high wold, And on these dews that drench the furze. And all the silvery gossamers That twinkle into green and gold: Calm and […]...
34. 'Fall, leaves, fall&#039 Fall, leaves, fall; die, flowers, away; Lengthen night and shorten day; Every leaf speaks bliss to me Fluttering from the autumn tree. I shall smile when wreaths of snow Blossom where the rose should grow; I shall sing when night’s decay Ushers in a drearier day....
35. Twinkletoes When the sun Shines through the leaves of the apple-tree, When the sun Makes shadows of the leaves of the apple-tree, Then I pass On the grass From one leaf to another, From one leaf to its brother, Tip-toe, tip-toe! Here I go!...
36. Friend, your white beard sweeps the ground Friend, your white beard sweeps the ground. Why do you stand, expectant? Do you hope to see it In one of your withered days? With your old eyes Do you hope to see The triumphal march of justice? Do not wait, friend! Take your white beard And your old eyes To more tender lands....
37. Pleasures I like to find What’s not found At once, but lies Within something of another nature, In repose, distinct. Gull feathers of glass, hidden In white pulp: the bones of squid Which I pull out and lay Blade by blade on the draining board Tapered as if for swiftness, to pierce The heart, but fragile, […]...
38. Mossbawn: Two Poems in Dedication 1. Sunlight There was a sunlit absence. The helmeted pump in the yard Heated its iron, Water honeyed In the slung bucket And the sun stood Like a griddle cooling Against the wall Of each long afternoon. So, her hands scuffled Over the bakeboard, The reddening stove Sent its plaque of heat Against her where […]...
39. Far Within Us #1 We raise our arms The street climbs into the sky We lower our eyes The roofs go down into the earth From every pain We do not mention Grows a chestnut tree That stays mysterious behind us From every hope We cherish Sprouts a star That moves unreachable before us Can you hear a bullet […]...
40. From "THE TALK OF FLOWERS&quot I do not know, whether the sun Accomplished it, The rain or wind – But I was missing so The whiteness and the snow. I listened to the rustling Of spring rain, Washing the reddish buds Of chestnut-trees, – And a tiny spring ran down Into the valley from the hill – And I was […]...