Bliss Carman, et al., eds. The World’s Best Poetry.
Volume V. Nature. 1904. | | | | V. Trees: Flowers: Plants | | The Holly-Tree | | Robert Southey (1774–1843) |
| | | O READER! hast thou ever stood to see | |
| The holly-tree? | |
| The eye that contemplates it well perceives | |
| Its glossy leaves | |
| Ordered by an intelligence so wise | 5 |
| As might confound the atheist’s sophistries. | |
| |
| Below, a circling fence, its leaves are seen | |
| Wrinkled and keen; | |
| No grazing cattle, through their prickly round, | |
| Can reach to wound; | 10 |
| But as they grow where nothing is to fear, | |
| Smooth and unarmed the pointless leaves appear. | |
| |
| I love to view these things with curious eyes, | |
| And moralize; | |
| And in this wisdom of the holly-tree | 15 |
| Can emblems see | |
| Wherewith, perchance, to make a pleasant rhyme, | |
| One which may profit in the after-time. | |
| |
| Thus, though abroad, perchance, I might appear | |
| Harsh and austere; | 20 |
| To those who on my leisure would intrude, | |
| Reserved and rude; | |
| Gentle at home amid my friends I ’d be, | |
| Like the high leaves upon the holly-tree. | |
| |
| And should my youth—as youth is apt, I know— | 25 |
| Some harshness show, | |
| All vain asperities I, day by day, | |
| Would wear away, | |
| Till the smooth temper of my age should be | |
| Like the high leaves upon the holly-tree. | 30 |
| |
| And as, when all the summer trees are seen | |
| So bright and green, | |
| The holly-leaves their fadeless hues display | |
| Less bright than they; | |
| But when the bare and wintry woods we see, | 35 |
| What then so cheerful as the holly-tree? | |
| |
| So, serious should my youth appear among | |
| The thoughtless throng; | |
| So would I seem, amid the young and gay, | |
| More grave than they; | 40 |
| That in my age as cheerful I might be | |
| As the green winter of the holly-tree. | | | | |
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