Thomas Hardy

To a Tree in London

(Clement’s Inn)

Here you stay
Night and day,
Never, never going away!

Do you ache
When we take
Holiday for our health’s sake?

Wish for feet
When the heat
Scalds you in the brick-built street,

That you might
Climb the height
Where your ancestry saw light,

Find a brook
In some nook
There to purge your swarthy look?

No. You read
Trees to need
Smoke like earth whereon to feed...

Have no sense
That far hence
Air is sweet in a blue immense,

Thus, black, blind,
You have opined
Nothing of your brightest kind;

Never seen
Miles of green,
Smelt the landscape’s sweet serene.