GREEN LEAVES
There will be life where all is dead,
Life, green life, tangled and matted.
Tearing apart what man has paved,
Strange new shoots will force their way:
Life, green life, will conquer the clay.
Life, green life, tangled and matted.
Tearing apart what man has paved,
Strange new shoots will force their way:
Life, green life, will conquer the clay.
V.
What are we
But leaves of a tree,
Pallid, fluttering leaves of a tree,
Whited and thinned,
Flung by the wind,
Torn and freed by the scattering wind,
Treading, and trod
By man and god
Into our mother and grave, the sod?
What are we
But leaves of a tree,
Pallid, fluttering leaves of a tree,
Whited and thinned,
Flung by the wind,
Torn and freed by the scattering wind,
Treading, and trod
By man and god
Into our mother and grave, the sod?
VI.
Before man was, the patient trees
Greened in the Spring, dulled in the fall.
And after us, their vivid shawl
Will cover the nude brown limbs of earth.
Their slavery to man is brief—
They will come back to the free mirth
Before man was, the patient trees
Greened in the Spring, dulled in the fall.
And after us, their vivid shawl
Will cover the nude brown limbs of earth.
Their slavery to man is brief—
They will come back to the free mirth
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