William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. (1878–1962). Anthology of Massachusetts Poets. 1922.

The Divine Forest

IF there be leaves on the forest floor,

Dead leaves there are and nothing more,

If trunks of trees seem sentinels,

For what their vigil no man tells.

And if you clasp these guardian trees

Nothing there is to hurt or please;

Only the dead roof of the forest drops

Gently down and never stops

And roofs you in and roofs you under,

Mute and away from life’s dim thunder;

And if there come eternal spring

It is but more disheartening,

For Autumn takes the Spring and Summer—

Autumn that is the latest comer—

With the Springtime’s misty wonder

And the Summer’s yield of gold,

Weighs you down and weighs you under

To where the blackened leaves are mold …

The lone gift of the forest is ever new:

Eternity where dwell not you.

The forest, accepting, heeds you not;

Accepting all-you are forgot.

If there be leaves on the forest floor,

Dead leaves there are and nothing more.

Once the forest spoke but now is silent,

Save in the skyward branches whence no sound

Seems to touch ear of any man below—

Or else no longer the man knows how to hear.

Such men build roofs to keep the forest out,

Yet all their roofs are built of the forest’s self;

Only they make the dead tree a shield against the living.

Such lapsing of the forest then they use

And turn it into countless lowly dwellings;

Sometimes they even cut the living down

To leaven the dead roofs they would erect.

Though some of these low roofs are lovely there

Beneath the guardianship of forest trees,

And some yearn upward as with thought of wings,

Yet the eyes of the dwellers therein are dark

To the upper forest and they

Fearful of the windy freedom of its top.

They have forgotten

That the greatest roof is but a banner

And that it was a tree that made a Cross.