TREE-TOPS

By John Collings Squire

There beyond my window ledge,

Heaped against the sky, a hedge

Of huge and waving tree-tops stands

With multitudes of fluttering hands.

Wave they, beat they, to and fro,

Never stillness may they know,

Plunged by the wind and hurled and torn

Anguished, purposeless, forlorn.

“O ferocious, O despairing,

In huddled isolation faring

Through a scattered universe,

Lost coins from the Almighty's purse!”

“No, below you do not see

The firm foundations of the tree;

Anchored to a rock beneath

We laugh in the hammering tempest's teeth.

“Boughs like men but burgeons are

On an adamantine star;

Men are myriad blossoms on

A staunch and cosmic skeleton.”