Explore "Some Verses: Sonnets: TREES OF THE WILDERNESS" by Helen Hay Whitney on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The great bleak trees stand up against the sky / Lifting their naked arms in ceaseless prayer / To the unpitying heavens, that they might die, / Rather than drag their weary lives out there.
Thro' starless nights the untold hours wear on, / All awful phantom shapes affright the wood -- / And morning light but brings th' unwinking sun, / To torture with its glare their solitude.
In those grim wilds no sweet-voiced bird will sing, / No flowers will bloom within those trackless lands, / Nor is there trace of any living thing, / Save those gaunt giants, holding up their hands.
And when they fall, still round the unknown spot / Howls the rough wind, till in the common ground / They end the life which is -- and yet is not, -- / A riddle where no meaning shall be found.