Poetry
Leaves and Trees
ACANTHUS. ACANTHUS.
With their high name, these ample leaves that gleam Are like Homeric imagery ; I think A steed comes here to drink, and casts the drops Into their dark-green concaves, and here stands With forehead broad as an acanthus leaf, And gleam from the acanthus cast on it.
OLIVE TREES.
With caverned bole and twisted limb they bide, Of their grained branches sparing as old age Is sparing of the rankness that's hi youth, These olive trees.
They have the greyness of dim mornings when Noah or Numa walked the hillsides ; they Fall less into decay than into ruin, These stone-limey trees.
And are of man's domain as oxen are— Therefore more ancient than the forest trees— As ancient as his walls or as his ships— These laboured trees.
POPLAR TREE.
And worth the blossoms that acacias ,And chestnuts wear, are these Leaves that number and that motion have With verberation of the wind and rain— These that ensky themselves. And so With furrowed bole and black, the Poplar stands Child of the Celtic lands.
PADRMC COLUM.
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