In A Northern Wood

FRAGRANT are the cedar-boughs stretching green and level,
Feasting-halls where waxwings flit at their spicy revel,
But O the pine, the questing pine, that flings its arms on high
To search the secret of the sun and escalade the sky!
Rueful hemlocks, gaunt and old, with boughs a-droop, despairing,
Clutch for touch of mother-earth; the while the pine is daring
To rock the stars amid its cones and lull them with its croon,
And snare the silver eagle that is nested in the moon.

poem by Katharine Lee Bates
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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