Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, TREE 1947, by KATHLEEN JESSIE RAINE


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

TREE 1947, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Living now in myself the end of the world
Last Line: To burst into the last flowering of the world.
Subject(s): Death; Eden; Trees; Dead, The


Living now in myself the end of the world
I watch a tree with dry and shrivelled leaves
That curl slowly like fronds of fern-paper.

This is the tree that grew from sleep to Eden,
Bore blossom and babe, and a million million summers
Its leaves have whispered passion's language to lovers

And every spring has hung
The incarnate god bleeding among its branches
Whose dying is perennial as the vine.

Now all deaths have been died,
Nature has no more wombs for generation,
Roof-tree and lintel of the world are broken,
And the tree stands, a portent, at my door.

Now when the ash is shaking down its last fruits
I call to mind the spring, the lost innocence
Of flowers, and lovers, beautiful agents of creation.

This tree they raised, whose tinder now is dry,
Waiting for the ungenerated seed of fire
To burst into the last flowering of the world.





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