The Happy Tree
There was a bright and happy tree;
The wind with music laced its boughs,
Thither across the houseless sea
Came singing birds to house.
Men grudged the tree its happy eves,
Its happy dawns of eager sound;
So all that crown and tower of leaves
They leveled with the ground.
They made an upright of the stem,
A crosspiece of a bough they made:
No shadow of their deed on them
The fallen branches laid.
But blithely, since the year was young
When they a fitting hill did find,
There on the happy tree they hung
The Savior of mankind.