James Russell Lowell (1819–1891)

THE MAPLE puts her corals on in May,

While loitering frosts about the lowlands cling,

To be in tune with what the robins sing,

Plastering new log-huts ’mid her branches gray;

But when the Autumn southward turns away,

Then in her veins burns most the blood of Spring,

And every leaf, intensely blossoming,

Makes the year’s sunset pale the set of day.

O youth unprescient, were it only so

With trees you plant, and in whose shade reclined,

Thinking their drifting blooms Fate’s coldest snow!

You carve dear names upon the faithful rind,

Nor in that vernal stem the cross foreknow

That Age shall bear, silent, yet unresigned!