Advice to Maple-Trees
O little maple-trees,Slender and unkempt, looking with shaggy askanceUpon the moon-spiked solitude;O little maple-trees,Growing a little toward the skyThat touches you to all eyes save your own,You rattle insistently for wings,But wings could never tearThe stain of earth from your feet:The earth that gnaws at you untilYour wing-cries strike the autumn night.You see, with me, this crescent moonJuggled on the tawny fingertipOf a running cloud.The touch of your desire, or its fall,Would but be symbols of an equal death.
Words in this poem
- unkempt a.
- Not combed; disheveled; as, an urchin with unkempt hair. [Pref. un- not + kempt, p. p. of kemb.]
- askance adv.
- Sideways; obliquely; with a side glance; with disdain, envy, or suspicion. [Cf. D. schuin, schuins, sideways, schuiven to shove, schuinte slope. Cf. Asquint.]
- insistently adv.
- In an insistent manner.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Advice to Maple-Trees is in the public domain. This text is taken from Advice: A Book of Poems, Project Gutenberg ebook #60252; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Maxwell Bodenheim, Advice to Maple-Trees, in Advice: A Book of Poems (1920), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #60252, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/bodenheim-advice/advice-to-maple-trees.html, id L23398.
Form and metre
Advice to Maple-Trees is 16 lines in a single stanza. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 85%).
See other poems in iambic tetrameter.
Measured by Laurel's pipeline, not copied from a handbook: how stress and metre are counted, how rhyme is lettered, how a drifted rhyme is found. Where the dictionary cannot confirm a rhyme the letter is withheld, not guessed.
Rhyme words, stanza by stanza
The word that ends each line, lettered by the rhyme it makes; a dash is a line whose rhyme the dictionary could not confirm.
- 1 A--A------------ treesA · askance · solitude · treesA · sky · own · wings · tear · feet · until · night · moon · fingertip · cloud · fall · death
Scansion, line by line
Each line with its syllable count and the stresses the words themselves fix: / stressed, ˘ unstressed, · a syllable the word leaves free and the metre decides. Read against iambic tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| O little maple-trees, | 6 | ·/˘/˘· |
| Slender and unkempt, looking with shaggy askance | 12 | /˘·˘//˘·/˘˘/ |
| Upon the moon-spiked solitude; | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| O little maple-trees, | 6 | ·/˘/˘· |
| Growing a little toward the sky | 8 | /·/˘···· |
| That touches you to all eyes save your own, | 10 | ·/˘······· |
| You rattle insistently for wings, | 8 | ·/˘˘/˘·· |
| But wings could never tear | 6 | ···/˘· |
| The stain of earth from your feet: | 7 | ······· |
| The earth that gnaws at you until | 8 | ········ |
| Your wing-cries strike the autumn night. | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| You see, with me, this crescent moon | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| Juggled on the tawny fingertip | 9 | /˘··/˘/˘· |
| Of a running cloud. | 5 | ··/˘· |
| The touch of your desire, or its fall, | 9 | ····˘/··· |
| Would but be symbols of an equal death. | 10 | ···/˘··/˘· |
The reader shows the same poem with its rhymes coloured and a stress row above each line, the notes beside their stanzas, and any word's definition on a tap; the analysis page takes the whole book apart. How every part of this site was made.