Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE ELM, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: The wind had caught the elm at last
Last Line: Behind him with a stick, the limb!


The wind had caught the elm at last.
He'd lain all night and wondered how
'Twas bearing up against the blast:
And it was down for ever now,
Snapt like a match-stick. He, at dawn,
Had risen from his sleepless bed,
And, hobbling to the window, drawn
The blind up, and had seen, instead
Of that brave tree against the sky,
Thrust up into the windless blue
A broken stump not ten feet high...

And it was changed, the world he knew,
The world he'd known since he, tip-toe,
Had first looked out beneath the eaves,
And seen that tree at dawn, aglow,
Soaring with all its countless leaves
In their first glory of fresh green,
Like a big flame above the mead.

How many mornings he had seen
It soaring since -- well, it would need
A better head to figure out
Than his, now he was seventy-five,
And failing fast without a doubt --
The last of fifteen, left alive,
That in that very room were born,
Ay, and upon that very bed
He'd left at daybreak.
Many a morn
He'd seen it, stark against the red
Of winter sunrise, or in Spring --
Some April morning, dewy-clear,
With all its green buds glittering
In the first sunbeams, soaring sheer
Out of low mist.
The morn he wed
It seemed with glittering jewels hung...

And fifty year, his wife was dead --
And she, so merry-eyed and young...

And it was black the night she died,
Dead black against the starry sky,
When he had flung the window wide
Upon the night so crazily,
Instead of drawing down the blind
As he had meant. He was so dazed,
And fumbled so, he couldn't find
The hasp to pull it to, though crazed
To shut them out, that starry night,
And that great funeral-plume of black,
So awful in the cold starlight.
He'd fumbled till they drew him back,
And closed it for him...
And for long
At night he couldn't bear to see
An elm against the stars.
'Twas wrong,
He knew, to blame an innocent tree --
Though some folk hated elms, and thought
Them evil: for their great boughs fell
So suddenly...
George Stubbs was caught
And crushed to death. You couldn't tell
What brought that great bough crashing there,
Just where George sat -- his cider-keg
Raised to his lips -- for all the air
Was still as death ... And just one leg
Stuck silly-like out of the leaves,
When Seth waked up ten yards away
Where he'd been snoozing 'mid the sheaves.

'Twas queer-like; but you couldn't say
The tree itself had been to blame.
That bough was rotten through and through,
And would have fallen just the same
Though George had not been there...
'Twas true
That undertakers mostly made
Cheap coffins out of elm...
But he,
Well, he could never feel afraid
Of any living thing. That tree,
He'd seemed to hate it for a time
After she'd died ... And yet somehow
You can't keep hating without rhyme
Or reason any live thing.
Now
He grieved to see it, fallen low,
With almost every branch and bough
Smashed into splinters. All that snow,
A dead-weight, and that heavy blast,
Had dragged it down: and at his feet
It lay, the mighty tree, at last.

And he could make its trunk his seat
And rest awhile this winter's noon
In the warm sunshine. He could just
Hobble so far. And very soon
He'd lie as low himself. He'd trust
His body to that wood.
Old tree,
So proud and brave this many a year,
Now brought so low...
Ah! there was he,
His grandson, Jo, with never a fear
Riding a bough unbroken yet --
A madcap, like his father, Jim!
He'd teach him sense, if he could get
Behind him with a stick, the limb!





Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!


Other Poems of Interest...
Home: PoetryExplorer.net