The Stricken Tree

By day its twisted branches rear

Their gaunt arms to the sky,

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And its shrunken body bends before

The winds that hurry by.

It stands there whipped by wind and rain,

And never a leaf is born of its pain.

But when I look upon the tree

In the moon-haunted night

It is shadowy and beautiful,

Slim in the strange starlight.

On all its branches the stars are tossed

To comfort it for the leaves that are lost.

And sometimes I think in this world of pain-

I who am leafless and wealed with scars!-

Of the tree that will never bear leaves again,

Bearing the golden stars.