Samuel Gardner by Edgar Lee Masters — Read

I who kept the greenhouse, / Lover of trees and flowers, / Oft in life saw this umbrageous elm, / Measuring its generous branches with my eye, / And listened to its rejoicing leaves / Lovingly patting each other / With sweet aeolian whispers.

And well they might:

For the roots had grown so wide and deep / That the soil of the hill could not withhold / Aught of its virtue, enriched by rain, / And warmed by the sun;

But yielded it all to the thrifty roots, / Through which it was drawn and whirled to the trunk, / And thence to the branches, and into the leaves, / Wherefrom the breeze took life and sang.

Now I, an under-tenant of the earth, can see / That the branches of a tree / Spread no wider than its roots.

And how shall the soul of a man / Be larger than the life he has lived?