O Reader! hast thou ever stood to see
The holly tree?
The eye that contemplates it well perceives
Its glossy leaves
Order’d by an intelligence so wise,
As might confound the Atheist’s sophistries.
Below, a circling fence, its leaves are seen
Wrinkled and keen;
No grazing cattle through their prickly round
Can reach to wound;
But as they grow where nothing is to fear,
Smooth and unarm’d the pointless leaves appear.
I love to view these things with curious eyes,
And moralize;
And in this wisdom of the holly tree
Can emblems see
Wherewith perchance to make a pleasant rhyme,
One which may profit in the after-time.
Thus, though abroad perchance I might appear
Harsh and austere,
To those who on my leisure would intrude
Reserved and rude,
Gentle at home amid my friends I’d be,
Like the high leaves upon the holly tree
And should my youth, as youth is apt, I know
Some harshness show,
All vain asperities I day by day
Would wear away,
Till the smooth temper of my age should be
Like the high leaves upon the holly tree.
And as when all the summer trees are seen
So bright and green,
The holly leaves their fadeless hues display
Less bright than they;
But when the bare and wintry woods we see,
What then so cheerful as the holly tree?
So serious should my youth appear among
The thoughtless throng,
So would I seem amid the young and gay
More grave than they,
That in my age as cheerful I might be
As the green winter of the holly tree.