Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, SONG OF THE WINTER TREE, by ELIZA COOK


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

SONG OF THE WINTER TREE, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: What a happy life was mine
Last Line: And forget ye as they do the winter tree.
Subject(s): Trees


WHAT a happy life was mine
When the sunbeams used to twine
Like golden threads about my summer suit;
When my warp and woof of green
Let enough of light between,
Just to dry the dew that lingered at my root.

What troops of friends I had
When my form was richly clad.
And I was fair 'mid fairest things of earth!
Good company came round,
And I heard no rougher sound
Than childhood's laugh in bold and leaping mirth.

The old man sat him down
To note my emerald crown,
And rest beneath my branches thick and bright;
The squirrel on my spray
Kept swinging all the day,
And the song birds chattered to me through the night.

The dreaming poet laid
His soft harp in my shade,
And sung my beauty, chorussed by the bee;
The village maiden came
To read her own dear name,
Carved on my bark, and bless the broad green tree.

The merry music breathed,
While the bounding dancers wreathed
In niazy windings round my giant stem;
And the joyous words they poured,
As they trod the chequered sward,
Told the green tree was a worshipped thing by them.

Oh, what troops of friends I had,
To make my strong heart glad,
What kind ones answered to my rustling call!
I was hailed with smiling praise,
In the glowing summer days,
And the beautiful green tree was loved by all.

But the bleak wind hath swept by,
And the gray cloud dimmed the sky,
My latest leaf has left my inmost bough;
I creak in grating tones,
Like the skeleton's bleached bones,
And not a footstep seeks the old tree now.

I stand at morning's dawn,
The cheerless and forlorn;
The sunset comes and finds me still alone;
The mates who shared my bloom
Have left me in my gloom;
Birds, poet, dancers, children -- all are gone

The hearts that turned this way
When I stood in fine array,
Forsake me now as though I ceased to be;
I win no painter's gaze,
I hear no minstrel's lays,
The very nest falls from the leafless tree.

But the kind and merry train
Will be sure to come again,
With love and smiles as ready as of yore,
I must only wait to wear
My robe so rich and fair,
And they will throng as they have thronged before.

Oh, ye who dwell in pride
With parasites beside,
Only lose your summer green leaves and ye'll see
That the courtly friends will change
Into things all cold and strange,
And forget ye as they do the winter tree.





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