THE CHESTNUT GATHERER.

When I was a boy still bare of knee

my world was small, as I was small,

so small and so much built upon

that there was within it to be found,

at least as far as I could tell,

just one solitary chestnut-tree.

And in the autumn,

for many autumns surely,

there came a morning

when, stealthily setting out,

shirking all wonted companions,

I made my way in haste,

my goal as distant as I might dare,

to a shady corner of the park,

great my relief, approaching,

to find no human form beneath those branches,

such was my greed for privacy.

I stood for a moment at ease,

pretending no purpose, calming my fever,

before strolling with avid downcast eyes

in widening circles about the tree,

noting with envy and resentment

the larger portions of integument,

the vacant settings of plum jewels

rifled earlier by vulgar hands.

Such scrutiny little yielding,

a search of the wider debris

affords some suitable missile,

some form of readymade club,

with which to hunt those beauties still above.

Those that fell to my awkward aim

I gingerly pressed beneath my heel

until, the glossy skin revealed,

my fingers finished the disrobing,

turning the nippled wonder in my palm,

virgin, never before laid bare,

raising it in the cup of my hand,

its rich ripe odour to inhale.

Later, success now a long time elusive,

I permit myself just one last throw.

With an eye for one enormous orb,

while praying to God my arm to guide

and pledging vague sacrifice in return,

I hurl my baton once more aloft.

He never once my vanity humoured.

Soon I was walking homeward,

a little angry and a little chastised.

Many autumns on, and all the world my world,

I have walked through forests of such trees

and kicked their droppings from my path

as if they no more than so much natural rubbish.

(Yes! What's held precious needs must be rare

and what's a poet with poets everywhere?)

So enthuse, if you really must,

about your soul's enduring intimacy

with maple, birch and lime,

or, indeed, with any other tree besides;

but speak not to me, please, of the chestnut;

for we are, you see,

a class of trinity,

—I, God, and the chestnut-tree.