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.
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📖 About this poem
This is John Clare doing what he does best: looking hard at one unremarkable tree until it becomes remarkable. Nothing dramatic happens here — no drama at all, really — just a patient inventory of the maple's parts, from its green tassel flowers to its staghorn seeds to the corduroy-ribbed bark that smooths out higher up the trunk. The poem's music comes from that close, almost obsessive cataloguing, the way one detail simply leads to the next until the tree's whole small ecosystem appears: hemlock flowers, moss, spotted orchis, bluebells crowding underneath. The rhymes are loose and homely, more like a naturalist's notebook than a formal ode, which suits the subject.
What lands today is the sheer attention. Clare isn't making the tree mean something else — he just loves it, plainly, and says so. That kind of unguarded noticing, the world gemmed with morning hours, still feels rare and quietly restorative.
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