Explore "The Master and the Leaves" by Thomas Hardy on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
I. WE are budding, Master, budding, / We of your favourite tree; / March drought and April flooding / Arouse us merrily, / Our stemlets newly studding; / And yet you do not see!
II. We are fully woven for summer / In stuff of limpest green, / The twitterer and the hummer / Here rest of nights, unseen, / While like a long-roll drummer / The nightjar thrills the treen.
III. We are turning yellow, Master, / And next we are turning red, / And faster then and faster / Shall seek our rooty bed, / All wasted in disaster! / But you lift not your head.
IV. -"I mark your early going, / And that you'll soon be clay, / I have seen your summer showing / As in my youthful day; / But why I seem unknowing / Is too sunk in to say! "