TO A LIQUID
AMBER TREE
This poem is somewhat in the form of an ode as used by the
English Romantics. That is to say it is in a regular stanza form and
starts with a specific object or set of images and evolves from them
to a more general feeling-filled philosophic tone.
Each line is an Iambic pentameter- 5 times unstressed,
stressed syllables (Through summer rain and sun
your season's worth), that is the same as Shakespeare's
Sonnets and plays and the odes of Keats. There are 10 lines in each
stanza with a rhyming scheme ABAB CDCD EE. This means that as well
as the overall arc of the development and meaning of the poem there
is also a smaller development in each stanza. The first four lines
introduce some meanings and images, the next four develop them and
the final last two rhyming lines come to a sort of "conclusion".
The subject of the poem could be called in a general way
"time", especially as it lives in human experience.
PS The Liquid Amber Tree is also known as American Sweetgum.
TO
A LIQUID AMBER TREE
Through summer rain
and sun your season's worth
Was in the
flourishing of green life, bringing
Leaf-mantle's shade,
rich on the morning earth,
Wide-fingered
branches sheltering the singing,
Light-winged
inhabitants of air. But since
Eternal time
soft-turns till autumn's caught
The dawning sun in
misty breath that hints
At grey-eyed
winter's sharp and frosty thought
You have transformed
your sun-born plenitude
To constellations of
wild stars, flame-hued.
As golden as a
harvest moon arising
Through eastern
night's autumnal, misty skies,
As yellow as a
candle flame aspiring
To cheer with single
light night-wintered eyes,
As red as soon-descending solar face
Farewelling day
through scattered westward cloud,
Are these your
leaves, still hanging in their place,
But changing to a
multi-coloured crowd.
Like youthful
memories made jewels by years,
Soon shed as
silently as secret tears.
Such is the raiment
of the days, once green
With expectations of
arising powers:
A prospect of
accomplishment that's seen
To fade to golden
failings with the hours
That flee in
multitudes as fleeting days
And pass too swiftly
through the flying years.
Forever to the
future passing, plays
Hard time's
relentless march, and in our ears
All that once was of
hope and purposed reason
Is melody now lost
in fading's season.
The gold-red leaves
are shed and flutter down,
Lie brittle now
before the winter's birth;
And from remembered
glory die to brown,
And vanish in the
all-absorbing earth.
Bare branches are a
skeleton of tree,
The seeming death of
life's green flame, imploring
Repeal of winter's
temporal decree,
And trembling in the
freezing wind's rough warring.
And in the season of
the early frost
The memory of
bursting life seems lost.
But deep is life and
time has phoenix wings,
And every dying is a
being born,
And all that's lost
is secret gain and brings,
Like night, a
never-lived-before, new dawn.
So winters bring new
buds of spring, allow
The sole bird of the
fire-death to soar,
Declaring life in
ever-fuller power,
Its new-born glory
greater than before...
And thus in time
time's endless purpose shows;
And thus in time
time's tree forever grows.
