Poem by Edwin John Dove Pratt

The Pine Tree

I saw how he would come each night and wait
    An hour or more beside that broken gate—
    Just stand, and stare across the road with dim,
Grey eyes. Nothing was there but an old pine tree,
Cut down and sawn in lengths; and absently
    He answered questions that I put to him.

He spoke as if some horrid deed were done—
Murder—no less—it seemed to be;
A week before, under his very eyes,
A gang of men had slain a tree.
The pine was planted seventy years ago
To celebrate his birth,
It had a right, he said, to live and grow,
And then into the earth,
By a mild and understanding law,
To pass with nature's quiet burial.
But they had come, those men, with axe and saw,
And killed it like a criminal,
And with the hangman's rope about its neck,
It swayed a moment, then with heavy sound,
Dropped with a crash of branches to the ground.

1. The Toll of the Bells
2. The Flood Tide
3. The Morning Plunge
4. The Big Fellow
5. The Ground-Swell

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