The March Orchard / Ethelwyn Wetherald

The March Orchard

Unleaved, undrooping, still, they stand,
This stanch and patient pilgrim band;
October robbed them of their fruit,
November stripped them to the root,
The winter smote their helplessness
With furious ire and stormy stress,
And now they seem almost to stand
In sight of Summer’s Promised Land.

Yet seen through frosty window-panes,
When bared and bound in wintry chains,
Their lightsome spirits seemed to play
With February as with May.
The snow that turned the skies afrown
Enwrapt them in the softest down,
And rains that dulled the landscape o’er
But left them livelier than before.

But now this June-like day of March
With patient strength their branches arch,
Not as unmindful of the breeze
That makes midsummer melodies,
But knowing Spring a fickle maid,
And that rough days must dawn and fade
Before, all blossoming bright, they stand
In sight of Summer’s Promised Land.

~~
Ethelwyn Wetherald (1857-1940)
from The House of the Trees, and other poems, 1895

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada, the United States, and the European Union]

Ethelwyn Wetherald biography