Poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay

The Hedge of Hemlocks

Somebody long ago
Set out this hedge of hemlocks; brought from the woods, I;d say, 
Saplings ten inches tall, curving and delicate, not shaped like trees,
And set them out, to shut the marshes from the lawn,
A hedge of ferns.

Four feet apart he set them, far apart, leaving them room to grow …
Whose crowded lower boughs these fifty years at least
Are spiky stumps outthrust in all direction, dry, dropping scaly bark, in the deep shade making a thick
Dust which here and there floats in a short dazzling beam.

Green tops, delicate and curving yet, above this fence of brush, like ferns,
You have done well: more than the marshes now is shut away from his protected dooryard;
The mountain, too, is shut away; not even the wind
May trespass here to stir the purple phlox in the tall grass.

And yet one afternoon how easily between
Your stems, unheard, snapping no twig, dislodging no shell of loosened bark, unseen
Even by the spider through whose finished web he walked, and left it as he found it,
A neighbor entered.

1. MacDougal Street
2. The Fledgling
3. Low-Tide
4. The Shroud
5. Well, I Have Lost You

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