Way out, on what was a barren plain
A tree has taken root,
Over the spot where a poet’s lain
It bears the strangest fruit,
He wasn’t read while he lived and wrote,
Was neglected till he died,
But scribbled each verse like a private note
That he hugged to him in pride.

He lived in a garret, quite alone
And without a loving mate,
His heart would leap at each lovely girl
As she passed his garden gate,
But far too shy to invite them in
He could only sit and stare,
And think each time of what could have been
If he’d chanced to step out there.

But love still flowed from his poet’s pen
Though he had no-one to care,
He captured it from the universe
And he wrote it everywhere,
He left it piled in his gloomy den
When he took sick of the ride,
Turned his eyes to heaven again,
Gave up the ghost, and died.

They didn’t know what to do with it,
This love from a poet’s pen,
So placed it in the coffin with him
These shallow, heartless men,
Buried him out on a barren plain
Where nothing ever grew,
But marked the spot by planting there
A tree, namely, a Yew.

It’s twenty years since poetry was
Planted there, unread,
Alongside in the coffin with
The poet, newly dead,
But on the tree that proudly stands
With its roots entwined in love,
Each leaf reveals a verse or two
Fluttering from above.

David Lewis Paget