Russell KincaidIn the last spring I ever knew,In those last days, I sat in the forsaken orchardWhere beyond fields of greenery shimmeredThe hills at Miller’s Ford;Just to muse on the apple treeWith its ruined trunk and blasted branches,And shoots of green whose delicate blossomsWere sprinkled over the skeleton tangle,Never to grow in fruit.And there was I with my spirit girdedBy the flesh half dead, the senses numbYet thinking of youth and the earth in youth,—Such phantom blossoms palely shiningOver the lifeless boughs of Time.O earth that leaves us ere heaven takes us!Had I been only a tree to shiverWith dreams of spring and a leafy youth,Then I had fallen in the cycloneWhich swept me out of the soul’s suspenseWhere it’s neither earth nor heaven.
In the last spring I ever knew,In those last days, I sat in the forsaken orchardWhere beyond fields of greenery shimmeredThe hills at Miller’s Ford;Just to muse on the apple treeWith its ruined trunk and blasted branches,And shoots of green whose delicate blossomsWere sprinkled over the skeleton tangle,Never to grow in fruit.And there was I with my spirit girdedBy the flesh half dead, the senses numbYet thinking of youth and the earth in youth,—Such phantom blossoms palely shiningOver the lifeless boughs of Time.O earth that leaves us ere heaven takes us!Had I been only a tree to shiverWith dreams of spring and a leafy youth,Then I had fallen in the cycloneWhich swept me out of the soul’s suspenseWhere it’s neither earth nor heaven.