The Trembling Tree
On greenest grass the lace of lights
Beneath the shadowing tree
Trembles, as when eyes more than lips
Are smiling silently.
Its motion all but motionless
Is like a dancer’s feet
Half—stirred, half—stilled, ere music throb
To float them on its beat.
Is it a music ears can hear?
Or in a world so jarred
With inward wrong, is it a sound
Too happy to be heard?
O tell me, tell me! Could I slip
The time’s perversity,
There would be music in the air
And I that trembling tree.
A spirit smiling to itself
Seems in those leaves to live;
And for a moment, lost in it,
I can this world forgive.
