There stood a tree, stiff and brown.
Its leaves were gone, its branches down,
And where the top of it did bend,
There sat a mossy, knobby end.

And yet, for what the tree had not,
"A handsome one," is what I thought.
Although I couldn't reason why,
"A handsome tree," is what thought I.

But then to much surprise it seemed
That against the wind it leaned,
And when the wind ceased to blow,
The tree went moving on like so:

Not waving, nor falling, nor staying put,
Uprooting and planting its own foot!
But glasses quickly showed to me,
A man where there'd been a tree.