Famous Tree Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Tree poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous tree poems. These examples illustrate what a famous tree poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
William Barnes
The girt woak tree that's in the dell !
There's noo tree I do love so well;
Vor times an' times when I wer young
I there've a-climb'd, an' there've a-zwung,
An' pick'd the eacorns green, a-shed
In wrestlen storms from his broad head,
An' down below's the cloty brook
Where I did vish with line an' hook,
An' beat, in playsome dips and zwims,
The foamy stream,...Read more of this...
by
Paul Laurence Dunbar
There's a memory keeps a-runnin'
Through my weary head to-night,
An' I see a picture dancin'
In the fire-flames' ruddy light;
'Tis the picture of an orchard
Wrapped in autumn's purple haze,
With the tender light about it
That I loved in other days.
An' a-standin' in a corner
Once again I seem to see
The verdant leaves an' branches
Of an old apple-tree.
You perhaps would call it ugly,
An' I don't...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
A Drop Fell on the Apple Tree --
Another -- on the Roof --
A Half a Dozen kissed the Eaves --
And made the Gables laugh --
A few went out to help the Brook
That went to help the Sea --
Myself Conjectured were they Pearls --
What Necklace could be --
The Dust replaced, in Hoisted Roads --
The Birds jocoser sung --
The Sunshine threw...Read more of this...
by
Jane Taylor
Old John had an apple-tree, healthy and green,
Which bore the best codlins that ever were seen,
So juicy, so mellow, and red;
And when they were ripe, he disposed of his store,
To children or any who pass'd by his door,
To buy him a morsel of bread.
Little Dick, his next neighbour, one often might see,
With longing eye viewing this...Read more of this...
by
Wang Wei
Narrow path sunless temple locust tree
Deep dark much green moss
Should gate except meet sweep
In case have hill monk come
A narrow, sunless path to the temple tree,
Deep and dark; abundant green moss.
Wait by the gate when finished sweeping the yard,
In case a monk should come down from the hill....Read more of this...
by
Eugene Field
A bottle tree bloometh in Winkyway land -
Heigh-ho for a bottle, I say!
A snug little berth in that ship I demand
That rocketh the Bottle-Tree babies away
Where the Bottle Tree bloometh by night and by day
And reacheth its fruit to each wee, dimpled hand;
You take of that fruit as much as you list,
For colic's a nuisance that doesn't exist!
So cuddle...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
When the tree of my existence shall be cut down, when
my members shall be dispersed, let them make pitchers
of my dust and fill these pitchers with wine; then shall
my dust be revived [through the wine contained in
them]....Read more of this...
by
Denise Levertov
White dawn. Stillness.When the rippling began
I took it for sea-wind, coming to our valley with rumors of salt, of treeless horizons. But the white fog
didn't stir; the leaves of my brothers remained outstretched, unmoving.
Yet the rippling drew nearer – and then my own outermost branches began to tingle, almost as if
fire had been lit below them, too close, and...Read more of this...
by
Ruth Padel
We're talking different kinds of vulnerability here.
These icicles aren't going to last for ever
Suspended in the ultra violet rays of a Dumfries sun.
But here they hang, a frozen whirligig of lightning,
And the famous American sculptor
Who scrambles the world with his tripod
For strangeness au naturel, got sunset to fill them.
It's not comfortable, a double helix of opalescent...Read more of this...
by
Sylvia Plath
A dream tree, Polly's tree:
a thicket of sticks,
each speckled twig
ending in a thin-paned
leaf unlike any
other on it
or in a ghost flower
flat as paper and
of a color
vaporish as frost-breath,
more finical than
any silk fan
the Chinese ladies use
to stir robin's egg
air. The silver-
haired seed of the milkweed
comes to roost there, frail
...Read more of this...
by
Edna St. Vincent Millay
XLI
I, being born a woman and distressed
By all the needs and notions of my kind,
Am urged by your propinquity to find
Your person fair, and feel a certain zest
To bear you body's weight upon my breast:
So subtly is the fume of life designed,
To clairfy the pulse and cloud the mind,
And leave me once again undone, possessed.
Think not for this, however,...Read more of this...
by
Edward Lear
There was an Old Man in a tree,
Who was horribly bored by a bee.
When they said "Does it buzz?"
He replied "Yes, it does!
It's a regular brute of a bee!"...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
One should not plant in his heart the tree of sadness.
On the contrary, he should ever peruse the book of joy.
One should drink wine, and follow the trend of his own
heart, for behold, the length of time remaining to you in
this world is quickly measured....Read more of this...
by
William Strode
Preethee stand still awhile, and view this tree
Renown'd and honour'd for antiquitie
By all the neighbour twiggs; for such are all
The trees adjoyning, bee they nere so tall,
Comparde to this: if here Jacke Maypole stood
All men would sweare 'twere but a fishing rodde.
Mark but the gyant trunk, which when you see
You see how many woods and groves there bee
Compris'd within...Read more of this...
by
Robert Frost
Tree at my window, window tree,
My sash is lowered when night comes on;
But let there never be curtain drawn
Between you and me.
Vague dream-head lifted out of the ground,
And thing next most diffuse to cloud,
Not all your light tongues talking aloud
Could be profound.
But tree, I have seen you taken and tossed,
And if you have seen me when I slept,
You have...Read more of this...
by
Robert Frost
(To hear us talk)
The tree the tempest with a crash of wood
Throws down in front of us is not bar
Our passage to our journey's end for good,
But just to ask us who we think we are
Insisting always on our own way so.
She likes to halt us in our runner tracks,
And make us get down in a foot of snow
Debating...Read more of this...
by
W S Merwin
Old friend now there is no one alive
who remembers when you were young
it was high summer when I first saw you
in the blaze of day most of my life ago
with the dry grass whispering in your shade
and already you had lived through wars
and echoes of wars around your silence
through days of parting and seasons of absence
with the house emptying as...Read more of this...
by
Thomas Hardy
I
Its roots are bristling in the air
Like some mad Earth-god's spiny hair;
The loud south-wester's swell and yell
Smote it at midnight, and it fell.
Thus ends the tree
Where Some One sat with me.
II
Its boughs, which none but darers trod,
A child may step on from the sod,
And twigs that earliest...Read more of this...
by
Rudyard Kipling
(A. D. 1200)
Of all the trees that grow so fair,
Old England to adorn,
Greater are none beneath the Sun,
Than Oak, and Ash, and Thorn.
Sing Oak, and Ash, and Thorn, good sirs,
(All of a Midsummer morn!)
Surely we sing no little thing,
In Oak, and Ash, and Thorn!
Oak of the Clay lived many a day,
Or ever AEneas began.
Ash...Read more of this...
by
Sylvia Plath
How this tart fable instructs
And mocks! Here's the parody of that moral mousetrap
Set in the proverbs stitched on samplers
Approving chased girls who get them to a tree
And put on bark's nun-black
Habit which deflects
All amorous arrows. For to sheathe the virgin shape
In a scabbard of wood baffles pursuers,
Whether goat-thighed or god-haloed. Ever since that first Daphne
Switched her incomparable back
For a...Read more of this...
by
Edwin Arlington Robinson
Could he have made Priscilla share
The paradise that he had planned,
Llewellyn would have loved his wife
As well as any in the land.
Could he have made Priscilla cease
To goad him for what God left out,
Llewellyn would have been as mild
As any we have read about.
Could all have been as all was not,
Llewellyn...Read more of this...
by
Walt Whitman
1
A CALIFORNIA song!
A prophecy and indirection—a thought impalpable, to breathe, as air;
A chorus of dryads, fading, departing—or hamadryads departing;
A murmuring, fateful, giant voice, out of the earth and sky,
Voice of a mighty dying tree in the Redwood forest dense.
Farewell, my brethren,
Farewell, O earth and sky—farewell, ye neighboring waters;
My time has ended, my term...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
She slept beneath a tree --
Remembered but by me.
I touched her Cradle mute --
She recognized the foot --
Put on her carmine suit
And see!...Read more of this...
by
Richard Jones
When the sun goes down
I have my first drink
standing in the yard,
talking to my neighbor
about the alder tree
rising between our houses,
a lowly tree that prospered
from our steady inattention
and shot up quick as a weed
to tower over our rooftops,
where it now brandishes
a rich, luxuriant crown.
Should we cut it down?
Neither of us wants to --
we agree that we like
the flourishing branches,
shade...Read more of this...
by
Siegfried Sassoon
Not much to me is yonder lane
Where I go every day;
But when there’s been a shower of rain
And hedge-birds whistle gay,
I know my lad that’s out in France
With fearsome things to see
Would give his eyes for just one glance
At our white hawthorn tree.
. . . .
Not much to me is yonder lane...Read more of this...
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