Classic and Contemporary Poetry
BUCOLIC COMEDY: GREEN GEESE, by EDITH SITWELL Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: The trees were hissing like green geese Last Line: "sighed those green geese, ""now the queen is dead." Subject(s): Trees | ||||||||
THE trees were hissing like green geese . . . The words they tried to say were these: "When the great Queen Claude was dead They buried her deep in the potting-shed." The moon smelt sweet as nutmeg-root On the ripe peach-trees' leaves and fruit, And her sandal-wood body leans upright, To the gardener's fright, through the summer night. * * * * * The bee-wing'd warm afternoon light roves Gilding her hair (wooden nutmegs and cloves), And the gardener plants his seedsman's samples Where no wild unicorn herd tramples -- In clouds like potting-sheds he pots The budding planets in leaves cool as grots, For the great Queen Claude when the light's gilded gaud Sings Miserere, Gloria, Laud. But when he passes the potting-shed, Fawning upon him comes the dead -- Each cupboard's wooden skeleton Is a towel-horse when the clock strikes one, And light is high -- yet with ghosts it winces All night 'mid wrinkled tarnished quinces, When the dark air seems soft down Of the wandering owl brown. They know the clock-faced sun and moon Must wrinkle like the quinces soon (That once in dark blue grass dew-dabbled Lay) . . . those ghosts like turkeys gabbled To the scullion baking the Castle bread -- "The Spirit, too, must be fed, be fed; Without our flesh we cannot see -- Oh, give us back Stupidity!" . . . But death had twisted their thin speech It could not fit the mind's small niche -- Upon the warm blue grass outside, They realized that they had died. Only the light from their wooden curls roves Like the sweet smell of nutmegs and cloves Buried deep in the potting-shed, Sighed those green geese, "Now the Queen is dead." | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE PROBLEM OF DESCRIBING TREES by ROBERT HASS THE GREEN CHRIST by ANDREW HUDGINS MIDNIGHT EDEN by JOSEPHINE JACOBSEN REFLECTION OF THE WOOD by LEONIE ADAMS THE LIFE OF TREES by DORIANNE LAUX AN OLD WOMAN: 2. HARVEST by EDITH SITWELL |
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