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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,

And all the morning of this lingering spring.

Every tree else may sing,

Every bough laugh and shake;

But the ash like an old man does not wake

Even though draws near the season's poise and noon

Of heavy-poppied swoon ...

Still the ash is asleep,

Or from his lower upraised palms now creep

First green leaves, promising that even those gaunt

Tossed boughs shall be the haunt

Of Autumn starlings shrill

Mid his full-leaved high branches never still.

If to any tree,

'Tis to the ash that I might likened be--

Masculine, unamenable, delaying,

With palms uplifted praying

For another life and Spring

Yet unforeshadowed; but content to swing

Stiff branches chill and bare

In this fine-quivering air

That others' love makes sweetness everywhere.