Generations

Amy Lowell, 1919

 

You are like the stem

Of a young beech-tree,

Straight and swaying,

Breaking out in golden leaves.

Your walk is like the blowing of a beech-tree

On a hill.

Your voice is like leaves

Softly struck upon by a South wind.

Your shadow is no shadow, but a scattered sunshine;

And at night you pull the sky down to you

And hood yourself in stars.

 

But I am like a great oak under a cloudy sky,

Watching a stripling beech grow up at my feet.