I am the Muse who sings not of no other,
I am the difference between light and night:
The art of spelt wind to carve my bark,
An empire of leaves thus adorn my shape,
A whisper through the grass sings me wake,
Steps of travellers dance to my trembling,
Nor it be not music mine ears to breath of yours,
Nor is it shaking lest my lonely state is bore.
I am the smoke; the one that is lifted from naught,
‘Tis the burning of the seen that now is more fraught,
Make no mistake that my smould’ring choke you here,
Make no mistake that it is the end of my heroic end,
Ere the birds shall sing their last and leave me here,
Now the ashes fall from me to ground in utmost pour,
And tears of amber shall lift my roots in motion soar,
At last it becomes me not the endless to bitter end,
When once I ask of ye: why so this I ought to rend?
Then twice more you respond with fine eyes cast away,
To the next; ere the next, here perplexed; all is hexed,
Nor is fixed, the air is thick, my tree a wick,
And knick my space, and kick my face, so all is waste!
Uproot myself, in muse I call, so here I fall,
When more I try, so luck I find, is rare behind,
And soon I cry, ere ground I bind, so fair and kind.
Though he and love these guests I cannot plea,
Nor my slow’st motion, stoic notion I cannot flee,
Here I sing of what love I once had from pot to soil,
Who saw me grow and visited me here to never foil,
To he, I was but just a tree with no love to give,
For I perish with no leaves to offer so he can live
In knowing my presence. Oh, but now no more to seep,
And as he leaves, it is for all but mine to weep.