The Meeting Of The Dryads By Oliver Wendell Holmes

Written after a general pruning of the trees around Harvard College. A little poem, on a similar occasion, may be found in the works of Swift, from which, perhaps, the idea was borrowed; although I was as much surprised as amused to meet with it some time after writing the following lines.

    It was not many centuries since,
    When, gathered on the moonlit green,
    Beneath the Tree of Liberty,
    A ring of weeping sprites was seen.

    The freshman’s lamp had long been dim,
    The voice of busy day was mute,
    And tortured Melody had ceased
    Her sufferings on the evening flute.

    They met not as they once had met,
    To laugh o’er many a jocund tale
    But every pulse was beating low,
    And every cheek was cold and pale.

    There rose a fair but faded one,
    Who oft had cheered them with her song;
    She waved a mutilated arm,
    And silence held the listening throng.

    “Sweet friends,” the gentle nymph began,
    “From opening bud to withering leaf,
    One common lot has bound us all,
    In every change of joy and grief.

    “While all around has felt decay,
    We rose in ever-living prime,
    With broader shade and fresher green,
    Beneath the crumbling step of Time.

    “When often by our feet has past
    Some biped, Nature’s walking whim,
    Say, have we trimmed one awkward shape,
    Or lopped away one crooked limb?

    “Go on, fair Science; soon to thee
    Shall. Nature yield her idle boast;
    Her vulgar fingers formed a tree,
    But thou halt trained it to a post.

    “Go, paint the birch’s silver rind,
    And quilt the peach with softer down;
    Up with the willow’s trailing threads,
    Off with the sunflower’s radiant crown!

    “Go, plant the lily on the shore,
    And set the rose among the waves,
    And bid the tropic bud unbind
    Its silken zone in arctic caves;

    “Bring bellows for the panting winds,
    Hang up a lantern by the moon,
    And give the nightingale a fife,
    And lend the eagle a balloon!

    “I cannot smile, – the tide of scorn,
    That rolled through every bleeding vein,
    Comes kindling fiercer as it flows
    Back to its burning source again.

    “Again in every quivering leaf
    That moment’s agony I feel,
    When limbs, that spurned the northern blast,
    Shrunk from the sacrilegious steel.

    “A curse upon the wretch who dared
    To crop us with his felon saw!
    May every fruit his lip shall taste
    Lie like a bullet in his maw.

    “In every julep that he drinks,
    May gout, and bile, and headache be;
    And when he strives to calm his pain,
    May colic mingle with his tea.

    “May nightshade cluster round his path,
    And thistles shoot, and brambles cling;
    May blistering ivy scorch his veins,
    And dogwood burn, and nettles sting.

    “On him may never shadow fall,
    When fever racks his throbbing brow,
    And his last shilling buy a rope
    To hang him on my highest bough!”

    She spoke; – the morning’s herald beam
    Sprang from the bosom of the sea,
    And every mangled sprite returned
    In sadness to her wounded tree.

Sonnet 97: How like a winter hath my absence been BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

How like a winter hath my absence been
From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year!
What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen!
What old December’s bareness everywhere!
And yet this time remov’d was summer’s time,
The teeming autumn, big with rich increase,
Bearing the wanton burthen of the prime,
Like widow’d wombs after their lords’ decease:
Yet this abundant issue seem’d to me
But hope of orphans and unfather’d fruit;
For summer and his pleasures wait on thee,
And thou away, the very birds are mute;
Or if they sing, ’tis with so dull a cheer
That leaves look pale, dreading the winter’s near.

Longing By Sara Teasdale

I am not sorry for my soul
That it must go unsatisfied,
For it can live a thousand times,
Eternity is deep and wide.

I am not sorry for my soul,
But oh, my body that must go
Back to a little drift of dust
Without the joy it longed to know.

I Have Loved Hours At Sea By Sara Teasdale

I have loved hours at sea, gray cities,
The fragile secret of a flower,
Music, the making of a poem
That gave me heaven for an hour;

First stars above a snowy hill,
Voices of people kindly and wise,
And the great look of love, long hidden,
Found at last in meeting eyes.

I have loved much and been loved deeply,
Oh when my spirit’s fire burns low,
Leave me the darkness and the stillness,
I shall be tired and glad to go.

A Winter Bluejay By Sara Teasdale

Crisply the bright snow whispered,
Crunching beneath our feet;
Behind us as we walked along the parkway,
Our shadows danced,
Fantastic shapes in vivid blue.
Across the lake the skaters
Flew to and fro,
With sharp turns weaving
A frail invisible net.
In ecstacy the earth
Drank the silver sunlight;
In ecstacy the skaters
Drank the wine of speed;
In ecstacy we laughed
Drinking the wine of love.
Had not the music of our joy
Sounded its highest note?
But no,
For suddenly, with lifted eyes you said,
“Oh look!”
There, on the black bough of a snow flecked maple,
Fearless and gay as our love,
A bluejay cocked his crest!
Oh who can tell the range of joy
Or set the bounds of beauty?

White-Eyes by Mary Oliver

In winter
    all the singing is in
         the tops of the trees
             where the wind-bird

with its white eyes
    shoves and pushes
         among the branches.
             Like any of us

he wants to go to sleep,
    but he’s restless—
         he has an idea,
             and slowly it unfolds

from under his beating wings
    as long as he stays awake.
         But his big, round music, after all,
             is too breathy to last.

So, it’s over.
    In the pine-crown
         he makes his nest,
             he’s done all he can.

I don’t know the name of this bird,
    I only imagine his glittering beak
         tucked in a white wing
             while the clouds—

which he has summoned
    from the north—
         which he has taught
             to be mild, and silent—

thicken, and begin to fall
    into the world below
         like stars, or the feathers
               of some unimaginable bird

that loves us,
    that is asleep now, and silent—
         that has turned itself
             into snow.

Love-Free By Sara Teasdale

I am free of love as a bird flying south in the autumn,
Swift and intent, asking no joy from another,
Glad to forget all of the passion of April
Ere it was love-free.

I am free of love, and I listen to music lightly,
But if he returned, if he should look at me deeply,
I should awake, I should awake and remember
I am my lover’s.

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