There was a time when Mother Nature made
My soul’s sun, and my soul’s shade.
A cloud in the sky could take away
The song in my heart for all day,
And a little lark in a willow-tree
Would mean happiness to me.
My moods would mirror all her whims;
Trees were my strength: their limbs, my limbs.
But, oh, my mother tortured me,
Blowing with wind, and sighing with sea.
I flamed, I withered, I blossomed, I sang,
With her I suffered pang for pang,
Until I said: “I will grow my own tree
Where no natural wind will bother me.”
And I grew me a willow of my own heart’s strength,
With my will for its width, and my wish for its length:
And I made me a bird of my own heart’s fire,
To sing my own sun, and my own desire.
And a vast white circle came in the air,
And the winds around said, “Don’t blow there.”
I said, “Blow on-blow, blow, blow, blow,
Fill all the sky, above, below,
With tempest, and sleet, and silence, and snow!
“Wherever I go, no matter where,
My bird and my willow-tree are there.
“However you frown, no matter how,
I will sing as I am singing now.”
(Genevieve Taggard)
More Poetry from Genevieve Taggard:
Genevieve Taggard Poems based on Topics: Nature, Fire, Time, Birds, Snow, Silence, Desire- Ice Age (Genevieve Taggard Poems)
- Boys And Girls (Genevieve Taggard Poems)
- Ode In Time Of Crisis (Genevieve Taggard Poems)
- Unacknowledg (Genevieve Taggard Poems)
- In The Shell Hole Of The World (Genevieve Taggard Poems)
- Talking Water (Genevieve Taggard Poems)
Readers Who Like This Poem Also Like:
Based on Topics: Time Poems, Nature Poems, Fire Poems, Birds Poems, Silence Poems, Snow Poems, Desire PoemsBased on Keywords: willow-tree, on-blow
- The Vision Of Piers Plowman - Part 14 (William Langland Poems)
- Alma; or, The Progress of the Mind. In Three Cantos. - Canto I. (Matthew Prior Poems)
- Hermann And Dorothea - IX. Urania (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Poems)
- Convict Once - Part Second. (James Brunton Stephens Poems)
- The Believer's Espousals : Chapter I. (Ralph Erskine Poems)