The Leaf And The Tree
Edna St. Vincent Millay 1892 (Rockland) – 1950 (Austerlitz)
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
Unguessed by small and tremulous you?
Shall not these branches in the end
To wisdom and the truth ascend?
And the great lightning plunging by
Look sidewise with a golden eye
To glimpse a tree so tall and proud
It sheds its leaves upon a cloud?
Here, I think, is the heart's grief:
The tree, no mightier than the leaf,
Makes firm its root and spreads it crown
And stands; but in the end comes down.
That airy top no boy could climb
Is trodden in a little time
By cattle on their way to drink.
The fluttering thoughts a leaf can think,
That hears the wind and waits its turn,
Have taught it all a tree can learn.
Time can make soft that iron wood.
The tallest trunk that ever stood,
In time, without a dream to keep,
Crawls in beside the root to sleep.
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on May 01, 2023
- 1:01 min read
- 203 Views
Quick analysis:
Scheme | AABBCCDDEEFFGGHH IIJJK KLLMMNNOO |
---|---|
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,027 |
Words | 203 |
Stanzas | 3 |
Stanza Lengths | 16, 5, 9 |
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"The Leaf And The Tree" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 10 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/9468/the-leaf-and-the-tree>.
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