| |
| IF there be leaves on the forest floor, | |
| Dead leaves there are and nothing more, | |
| If trunks of trees seem sentinels, | |
| For what their vigil no man tells. | |
| And if you clasp these guardian trees | 5 |
| Nothing there is to hurt or please; | |
| Only the dead roof of the forest drops | |
| Gently down and never stops | |
| And roofs you in and roofs you under, | |
| Mute and away from life’s dim thunder; | 10 |
| And if there come eternal spring | |
| It is but more disheartening, | |
| For Autumn takes the Spring and Summer— | |
| Autumn that is the latest comer— | |
| With the Springtime’s misty wonder | 15 |
| And the Summer’s yield of gold, | |
| Weighs you down and weighs you under | |
| To where the blackened leaves are mold … | |
| The lone gift of the forest is ever new: | |
| Eternity where dwell not you. | 20 |
| The forest, accepting, heeds you not; | |
| Accepting all-you are forgot. | |
| If there be leaves on the forest floor, | |
| Dead leaves there are and nothing more. | |
| |
| Once the forest spoke but now is silent, | 25 |
| Save in the skyward branches whence no sound | |
| Seems to touch ear of any man below— | |
| Or else no longer the man knows how to hear. | |
| Such men build roofs to keep the forest out, | |
| Yet all their roofs are built of the forest’s self; | 30 |
| Only they make the dead tree a shield against the living. | |
| Such lapsing of the forest then they use | |
| And turn it into countless lowly dwellings; | |
| Sometimes they even cut the living down | |
| To leaven the dead roofs they would erect. | 35 |
| Though some of these low roofs are lovely there | |
| Beneath the guardianship of forest trees, | |
| And some yearn upward as with thought of wings, | |
| Yet the eyes of the dwellers therein are dark | |
| To the upper forest and they | 40 |
| Fearful of the windy freedom of its top. | |
| They have forgotten | |
| That the greatest roof is but a banner | |
| And that it was a tree that made a Cross. | |
| |
