Maple Tree Poems

Table of Contents

1. The Maple

   by James Russell Lowell

   
   

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   The Maple puts her corals on in May,
   While loitering frosts about the lowlands cling,
   To be in tune with what the robins sing,
   Plastering new log-huts ’mid her branches gray;
   But when the Autumn southward turns away,
   Then in her veins burns most the blood of Spring,
   And every leaf, intensely blossoming,
   Makes the year’s sunset pale the set of day.
   O youth unprescient, were it only so
   With trees you plant, and in whose shade reclined,
   Thinking their drifting blooms Fate’s coldest snow!
   You carve dear names upon the faithful rind,
   Nor in that vernal stem the cross foreknow
   That Age shall bear, silent, yet unresigned!
   

2. The Maple

   by Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts

   
   

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   Oh, tenderly deepen the woodland glooms,
   And merrily sway the beeches;
   Breathe delicately the willow blooms,
   And the pines rehearse new speeches;
   The elms toss high till they reach the sky,
   Pale catkins the yellow birch launches,
   But the tree I love all the greenwood above
   Is the maple of sunny branches.
   

   Let who will sing of the hawthorn in spring,
   Or the late-leaved linden in summer;
   There's a word may be for the locust-tree,
   That delicate, strange new-comer;
   But the maple it glows with the tint of the rose
   When pale are the spring-time regions,
   And its towers of flame from afar proclaim
   The advance of Winter's legions.
   

   And a greener shade there never was made
   Than its summer canopy sifted,
   And many a day as beneath it I lay
   Has my memory backward drifted
   To a pleasant lane I may walk not again,
   Leading over a fresh, green hill,
   Where a maple stood just clear of the wood—
   And oh! to be near it still!
   

3. The Maple

   by H. F. Darnell

   
   

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   All hail to the broad-leaved Maple!
   With her fair and changeful dress—
   A type of our youthful country
   In its pride and loveliness;
   Whether in Spring or Summer,
   Or in the dreary Fall,
   'Mid Nature's forest children,
   She's fairest of them all.
   

   Down sunny slopes and valleys
   Her graceful form is seen,
   Her wide, umbrageous branches
   The sunburnt reaper screen;
   'Mid the dark-browed firs and cedars
   Her livelier colours shine,
   Like the dawn of the brighter future
   On the settler's hut of pine.
   

   She crowns the pleasant hilltop,
   Whispers on breezy downs,
   And casts refreshing shadows
   O'er the streets of our busy towns;
   She gladdens the aching eyeball,
   Shelters the weary head,
   And scatters her crimson glories
   On the graves of the silent dead.
   

   When winter's frosts are yielding
   To the sun's returning sway,
   And merry groups are speeding
   To sugar-woods away;
   The sweet and welling juices,
   Which form their welcome spoil,
   Tell of the teeming plenty,
   Which here waits honest toil.
   

   When sweet-toned Spring, soft-breathing,
   Breaks Nature's icy sleep,
   And the forest boughs are swaying
   Like the green waves of the deep;
   In her fair and budding beauty,
   A fitting emblem, she,
   Of this our land of promise,
   Of hope, of liberty.
   

   And when her leaves, all crimson,
   Droop silently and fall,
   Like drops of life-blood welling
   From a warrior brave and tall;
   They tell how fast and freely
   Would her children's blood be shed,
   Ere the soil of our faith and freedom
   Should echo a foeman's tread.
   

   Then hail to the broad-leaved Maple!
   With her fair and changeful dress—
   A type of our youthful country
   In its pride and loveliness;
   Whether in Spring or Summer,
   Or in the dreary Fall,
   'Mid Nature's forest children,
   She's fairest of them all.
   

4. The Maple

   by Frances Gill

   
   

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   I made a little poem once, about the maple tree,
   The vine maple, we call her; she's very good to see,
   Because she flaunts her colors early, and her clothing is so gay;
   She "coquettes" through all the woodland, in a fascinating way.
   

   She wears a dress of brightest green, when other trees are dark,
   She puts on spring leaves early, and she draws the singing lark;
   She's lightly clad in summer, but with first hint of fall
   She dons her yellows and her reds; she sets the styles for all.
   

   A printer took my poem, and at first I read with pain,
   That he had made a slight mistake and printed my vine vain;
   But as I read it over, my wrath was quickly spent,
   For a coquette she really is, and "vain" was what I meant.
   

   When you see her in the forest, you'll agree with me;
   She's the flirt of all the woodland, the vain vine maple tree!
   

5. Late October

   by Sylvester Baxter

   
   

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   Out of my window I look down
   Into the yard of my neighbor,
   My friend, the parish priest across the way,
   And this is the picture I see:
   A glowing maple rising like a fountain
   Out of the emerald lawn rimmed by a close-clipped hedge
   Of darker green.
   

   All gray the sky is, but the maple
   Gleams like spray in sunlight.
   Out of its blazing mass
   The leaves are showering
   Like the sparks that fly when a smouldering fire is stirred.
   They lie in drifts upon the grassy verdure
   Like lightly fallen snow of gold;
   They powder the sombre green of the hedge
   As gilded confetti might powder the head
   Of some strangely dark-haired beauty.
   

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