The Pine Tree (Pratt)

The Flood-Tide

The Pine Tree written by E. J. Pratt

Notes on Folk Music

From The Canadian Forum, June 1921, p. 272

I saw how he would come each night and wait
An hour or more beside that broken gate,
Just stand, and stare across the road with dim
Gray eyes. Nothing was there but an old pine tree,
Cut down and sawn in lengths; and absently
He answered questions that I put to him.

He spoke as if some horrid deed were done,
Murder — no less — it seemed to be;
A week before, under his very eyes,
A gang of men had slain a tree.
The pine was planted seventy years ago
To celebrate his birth,
It had a right, he said, to live and grow,
And then into the earth,
By a mild and understanding law,
To pass with nature's quiet burial.
But they had come, those men, with axe and saw,
And killed it like a criminal,
And with the hangman's rope about its neck,
It swayed a moment, then with heavy sound,
Dropped like a felon to the ground.