Acacia Tree

    All the trees and bushes of the garden
    Display their bright new green.

    But above them all, still bare,
    The great old acacia stands,
    His solitary bent black branches stark
    Against the garden and the sky.

    It is as though those other thoughtless shrubs,
    The winter over, hastened to rejoice
    And clothe themselves in spring's new finery,
    Heedless of all the iron time behind them.

    But he, older and wiser, stronger and sadder of heart,
    Remembers still the cruel winter, and knows
    That in some months that death will come again;
    And, for a season, lonelily meditates
    Above his lighter companions' frivolity.

    Till some late sunny day when, breaking thought,
    He'll suddenly yield to the fickle persuasive sun,
    And over all his rough and writhing boughs
    And tiniest twigs
    Will spread a pale green mist of feathery leaf,
    More delicate, more touching than all the verdure
    Of the younger, slenderer, gracefuller plants around.

    And then, when the leaves have grown
    Till the boughs can scarcely be seen through their crowded plumes,
    There will softly glimmer, scattered upon him, blooms,
    Ivory-white in the green, weightlessly hanging.

John Collings Squire, Sir

John Collings Squire, also known as Sir John Squire, was an influential British poet, writer, historian, and influential literary editor of the early 20th century. He is best known for his role as editor of the London Mercury, a powerful literary journal of the time. Squire was a leading figure in the Georgian poetry movement, which sought to return English poetry to its traditional form and diction.

John Collings Squire, Sir

Arab Song

John Collings Squire, Sir, Simple Poetry

Song

John Collings Squire, Sir, Simple Poetry

Envoi

John Collings Squire, Sir, Simple Poetry

At Night

John Collings Squire, Sir, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

A Chant

    Gently the petals fall as the tree gently sways
    That has known many springs and many petals fall
    Year after year to strew the green deserted ways
    And the statue and the pond and the low, broken wall.

    Faded is the memory of old things done,
    Peace floats on the ruins of ancient festival;
    They lie and forget in the warmth of the sun,
    And a sky silver-blue arches over all.

    O softly, O tenderly, the heart now stirs
    With desires faint and formless; and, seeking not, I find
    Quiet thoughts that flash like azure kingfishers
    Across the luminous, tranquil mirror of the mind.

John Collings Squire, Sir

The Ash

The undecaying yew has shed his flowers
Long since in golden showers.
The elm has robed her height
In green, and hangs maternal o'er the bright
Starred meadows, and her full-contented breast
Lifts and sinks to rest.
Shades drowsing in the grass
Beneath the hedge move but as the hours pass.
Beech, oak and beam have all put beauty on
In the eye of the sun.
Because the hawthorn's sweet
All the earth is sweet and the air, and the wind's feet.
In the wood's green hollows the earth is sweet and wet,
For scarce one shaft may get
The sudden green between:
Only that warm sweet creeps between the green;
Or in the clearing the bluebells lifting high
Make another azure sky.

All's leaf and flower except
The sluggish ash that all night long has slept,

John Frederick Freeman

Merrill's Garden

There is a garden where the seeded stems of thin long grass are bowed
Beneath July's slow rains and heat and tired children's trailing feet;
And the trees' neglected branches droop and make a cloud beneath the cloud,
And in that dark the crimson dew of raspberries shines more sweet than sweet.

The flower of the tall acacia's gone, the acacia's flower is white no more,
The aspen lifts his pithless arms, the aspen leaves are close and still;
The wind that tossed the clouds along, gray clouds and white like feathers bore,
Lets even a feather faintly fall and smoke spread hugely where it will.

But though the acacia's flower is gone and raspberries bear bright fruit untasted,
Beauty lives there, oh rich and rare, past the sum of eager June.
The lime tree's pyramid of flower and leaf...

John Frederick Freeman

Tree-Tops

    There beyond my window ledge,
    Heaped against the sky, a hedge
    Of huge and waving tree-tops stands
    With multitudes of fluttering hands.

    Wave they, beat they, to and fro,
    Never stillness may they know,
    Plunged by the wind and hurled and torn
    Anguished, purposeless, forlorn.

    "O ferocious, O despairing,
    In huddled isolation faring
    Through a scattered universe,
    Lost coins from the Almighty's purse!"

    "No, below you do not see
    The firm foundations of the tree;
    Anchored to a rock beneath
    We laugh in the hammering tempest's teeth.

    "Boughs like men but burgeons are
    On an adamantine star;
    Men are myriad blossoms on
    A staunch and cosmic skeleton."

John Collings Squire, Sir

In An Orchard

    Airy and quick and wise
    In the shed light of the sun,
    You clasp with friendly eyes
    The thoughts from mine that run.

    But something breaks the link;
    I solitary stand
    By a giant gully's brink
    In some vast gloomy land.

    Sole central watcher, I
    With steadfast sadness now
    In that waste place descry
    'Neath the awful heavens how

    Your life doth dizzy drop
    A little foam of flame
    From a peak without a top
    To a pit without a name.

John Collings Squire, Sir

Autumn

Syren of sullen moods and fading hues,
Yet haply not incapable of joy,
Sweet Autumn! I thee hail
With welcome all unfeigned;

And oft as morning from her lattice peeps
To beckon up the sun, I seek with thee
To drink the dewy breath
Of fields left fragrant then,

In solitudes, where no frequented paths
But what thine own foot makes betray thine home,
Stealing obtrusive there
To meditate thy end;

By overshadowed ponds, in woody nooks,
With ramping sallows lined, and crowding sedge,
Which woo the winds to play,
And with them dance for joy;

And meadow pools, torn wide by lawless floods,
Where waterlilies spread their oily leaves,
On which, as wont, the fly
Oft battens in the sun;

Where leans the mossy willow half way...

John Clare