Page:Poems Allen.djvu/127

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Through all the winter-time, cold and bare,
It shivered and sobbed in the bitter air,

Shaping its sorrow in longing words
Of last year's rain-drops and singing-birds.—

So sad and regretful his life must be
Who lives not on hope, but memory!—

And all the winter the grieving tree
Had something mournful to say to me.

So it wept and murmured, till, by and by,
There fell a smile from the pitying sky;

And the long limbs paused in their hopeless beat,
And their talk of a grave and a winding-sheet,—

Trying to fashion a merrier rhyme,
A song more meet for the summer-time,—

While the limber branches of silver-gray
Grew lithe and living from day to day,