Trees

Beneath the lyric loveliness of these
That were so scarred, and stricken in men's eyes,
There are no secret, bitter memories,^___
They have forgot the griefs that made them wise.
How there came winds with passionate lips^___and how
Their dreams dropped from them, one by withered one^___
All this is less than shadow any bough
Traces a leafy moment in the sun.

They are so lost in summer in the way
Dawn has of tangling bird notes in their hair,
In high, hushed noons, and intimate ends of day,-
Not any thought at all goes out to where,
Beyond their green content, the gray hours wait,
And wintry woes they have forgot of late.

^__Margaret Perkins Briggs

Contemporary Kansas Poetry
Helen Rhoda Hoopes
page 24
(Kansas City: Joseph D. Havens Company. 1927)