Winter Leafage
Edith Matilda Thomas
Each year I mark one lone outstanding tree,
Clad in its robings of the summer past,
Dry, wan, and shivering in the wintry blast.
It will not pay the season’s rightful fee, –
It will not set its frost-burnt leafage free;
But like some palsied miser all aghast,
Who hoards his sordid treasure to the last,
It sighs, it moans, it sings in eldritch glee.
A foolish tree, to dote on summers gone;
A faithless tree, that never feels how spring
Creeps up the world to make a leafy dawn,
And recompense for all despoilment bring!
Oh, let me not, heyday and youth withdrawn,
With failing hands to their vain semblance cling!
About this poem
“Winter Leafage” was published in Thomas’s book “Lyrics and Sonnets” (Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1887).
About Edith Matilda Thomas
Edith Matilda Thomas was born in Ohio in 1854. Her books include “A Winter Swallow: with other verse” (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1896) and “Fair Shadow Land” (Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1893). She died in 1925.
The Academy of American Poets is a nonprofit, mission-driven organization, whose aim is to make poetry available to a wider audience. Email The Academy at poem-a-day@poets.org.
This poem is in the public domain. Distributed by King Features Syndicate.
