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The Poplars

Dad did not always read from the masters. One day he took to the shore a thin little volume of poems by Bernard Freeman Trotter.

“I knew him overseas… he was killed… listen to his song about the poplars, Jane.

“And so I sing the poplars and when I come to die
I will not look for jasper walls but cast about my eye
For a row of wind-blown poplars against an English sky.

“What will you want to see when you get to heaven,Jane?”

“Lantern Hill,” said Jane.

-Jane of Lantern Hill ch.23

The Poplars
By Bernard Freeman Trottier

O, A LUSH green English meadow it’s there that I would lie
A skylark singing overhead, scarce present to the eye,
And a row of wind-blown poplars against an English sky.

The elm is aspiration, and death is in the yew,
And beauty dwells in every tree from Lapland to Peru ;
But there’s magic in the poplars when the wind goes through.

When the wind goes through the poplars and blows them silver white,
The wonder of the universe is flashed before my sight:
I see immortal visions: I know a god’s delight

I catch the secret rhythm that steals along the earth,
That swells the bud, and splits the burr, and gives the oak its girth,
That mocks the blight and canker with its eternal birth.

It wakes in me the savor of old forgotten things,
Before “reality” had marred the child’s imaginings:
I can believe in fairies I see their shimmering wings.

I see with the clear vision of that untainted prime,
Before the fool’s bells jangled in and Elfland ceased to chime,
That sin and pain and sorrow are but a pantomime

A dance of leaves in ether, of leaves threadbare and sere,
From whose decaying husks at last what glory shall appear
When the white winter angel leads in the happier year.

And so I sing the poplars ; and when I come to die
I will not look for jasper walls, but cast about my eye
For a row of wind-blown poplars against an English sky.

Oxford, September 1916.

An etext of Bernard Freeman Trottier’s volume of poetry, “A Canadian Twilight”, can be found here