In the last spring I ever knew, <br />In those last days, <br />I sat in the forsaken orchard <br />Where beyond fields of greenery shimmered <br />The hills at Miller's Ford; <br />Just to muse on the apple tree <br />With its ruined trunk and blasted branches, <br />And shoots of green whose delicate blossoms <br />Were sprinkled over the skeleton tangle, <br />Never to grow in fruit. <br />And there was I with my spirit girded <br />By the flesh half dead, the senses numb <br />Yet thinking of youth and the earth in youth, -- <br />Such phantom blossoms palely shining <br />Over the lifeless boughs of Time. <br />O earth that leaves us ere heaven takes us! <br />Had I been only a tree to shiver <br />With dreams of spring and a leafy youth, <br />Then I had fallen in the cyclone <br />Which swept me out of the soul's suspense <br />Where it's neither earth nor heaven.<br /><br />Edgar Lee Masters<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/russell-kincaid/
