The Leaf And The Tree Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: AABBCCDDEEFFGGHH IIJJK KLLMMNNOO| When will you learn myself to be | A |
| a dying leaf on a living tree | A |
| Budding swelling growing strong | B |
| Wearing green but not for long | B |
| Drawing sustenance from air | C |
| That other leaves and you not there | C |
| May bud and at the autumn's call | D |
| Wearing russet ready to fall | D |
| Has not this trunk a deed to do | E |
| Unguessed by small and tremulous you | E |
| Shall not these branches in the end | F |
| To wisdom and the truth ascend | F |
| And the great lightning plunging by | G |
| Look sidewise with a golden eye | G |
| To glimpse a tree so tall and proud | H |
| It sheds its leaves upon a cloud | H |
| - | |
| Here I think is the heart's grief | I |
| The tree no mightier than the leaf | I |
| Makes firm its root and spreads it crown | J |
| And stands but in the end comes down | J |
| That airy top no boy could climb | K |
| - | |
| Is trodden in a little time | K |
| By cattle on their way to drink | L |
| The fluttering thoughts a leaf can think | L |
| That hears the wind and waits its turn | M |
| Have taught it all a tree can learn | M |
| Time can make soft that iron wood | N |
| The tallest trunk that ever stood | N |
| In time without a dream to keep | O |
| Crawls in beside the root to sleep | O |
Edna St. Vincent Millay
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