poem

The Maple Tree — Jul 11, 2026

John Clare

0 votes

◆

The maple with its tassel flowers of green,
That turns to red a staghorn-shaped seed,
Just spreading out its scolloped leaves is seen,
Of yellowish hue, yet beautifully green;
Bark ribbed like corderoy in seamy screed,
That farther up the stem is smoother seen,
Where the white hemlock with white umbel flowers
Up each spread stoven to the branches towers;
And moss around the stoven spreads, dark green,
And blotched leaved orchis, and the blue bell flowers;
Thickly they grow and neath the leaves are seen;
I love to see them gemmed with morning hours,
I love the lone green places where they be,
And the sweet clothing of the maple tree.

◆

Comments

Loading comments…

📖 About this poem

John Clare wrote the way a naturalist walks — slowly, eyes down, noticing what most of us step past. This little sonnet is really just one long, patient look at a single maple tree, and everything hanging around its feet: hemlock, moss, orchis, bluebells, all crowded together in undergrowth Clare clearly knew on a first-name basis. The music is unhurried, almost breathless in the way clauses pile on top of each other without much punctuation to stop them, mimicking how the eye keeps finding one more thing to describe. The bark "ribbed like corderoy" is the image that sticks, homely and exact, the kind of comparison you get from someone who has actually touched the tree. What keeps it alive today is that total absence of grandeur — no lesson, no metaphor for mortality, just devotion to a patch of ground most people would never look at twice.