Not Too Sexy

Two more tree poems. These aren't particularly erotic, though (except in the sense that good poetry is pretty sexy). Just regular old turning-into-a-tree poems.



W.B. Yeats

Mongan Thinks of his Past Greatness

I HAVE drunk ale from the Country of the Young
And weep because I know all things now:
I have been a hazel tree and they hung
The Pilot Star and the Crooked Plough
Among my leaves in times out of mind:	5
I became a rush that horses tread:
I became a man, a hater of the wind,
Knowing one, out of all things, alone, that his head
Would not lie on the breast or his lips on the hair
Of the woman that he loves, until he dies;	10
Although the rushes and the fowl of the air
Cry of his love with their pitiful cries.

And another from Ezra Pound, one of my favorite poems ever even though I can't say why:

The Tree

I stood still and was a tree amid the wood,
Knowing the truth of things unseen before;
Of Daphne and the laurel bow
And that god-feasting couple old
that grew elm-oak amid the wold.
'Twas not until the gods had been
Kindly entreated, and been brought within
Unto the hearth of their heart's home
That they might do this wonder thing;
Nathless I have been a tree amid the wood
And many a new thing understood
That was rank folly to my head before.