Pines against the sky, <br />Pluming the purple hill; <br />Pines . . . and I wonder why, <br />Heart, you quicken and thrill? <br />Wistful heart of a boy, <br />Fill with a strange sweet joy, <br />Lifting to Heaven nigh - <br />Pines against the sky. <br /> <br />Palms against the sky, <br />Failing the hot, hard blue; <br />Stark on the beach I lie, <br />Dreaming horizons new; <br />Heart of my youth elate, <br />Scorning a humdrum fate, <br />Keyed to adventure high - <br />Palms against the sky. <br /> <br />Oaks against the sky, <br />Ramparts of leaves high-hurled, <br />Staunch to stand and defy <br />All the winds of the world; <br />Stalwart and proud and free, <br />Firing the man in me <br />To try and again to try - <br />Oaks against the sky. <br /> <br />Olives against the sky <br />Of evening, limpidly bright; <br />Tranquil and soft and shy, <br />Dreaming in amber light; <br />Breathing the peace of life, <br />Ease after toil and strife . . . <br />Hark to their silver sigh! <br />Olives against the sky. <br /> <br />Cypresses glooming the sky, <br />Stark at the end of the road; <br />Failing and faint am I, <br />Lief to be eased of my load; <br />There where the stones peer white <br />in the last of the silvery light, <br />Quiet and cold I'll lie - <br />Cypresses etching the sky. <br /> <br />Trees, trees against the sky - <br />O I have loved them well! <br />There are pleasures you cannot buy, <br />Treasurers you cannot sell, <br />And not the smallest of these <br />Is the gift and glory of trees. . . . <br />So I gaze and I know now why <br />It is good to live - and to die. . . . <br />Trees and the Infinite Sky.<br /><br />Robert William Service<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/trees-against-the-sky/
