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The Full Text of “Trees”
1I think that I shall never see
2A poem lovely as a tree.
3A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
4Against the sweet earth's flowing breast;
5A tree that looks at God all day,
6And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
7A tree that may in summer wear
8A nest of robins in her hair;
9Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
10Who intimately lives with rain.
11Poems are made by fools like me,
12But only God can make a tree.
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“Trees” Introduction
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"Trees" is a poem by Joyce Kilmer written in 1913. By far Kilmer's most popular work, the speaker insists that no poem can ever be as "lovely as a tree." In other words, human art invariably fails to match the beauty and majesty of nature. This is because nature was created by God, the speaker says; God designed the natural world, and thus its perfect harmony, balance, and wonder stands in testament to God's power. The best poetry can do, it seems, is to acknowledge its own failure while praising the wonder of God's creation.
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“Trees” Summary
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I don't think I'll ever read a poem that's as beautiful and perfect as a tree.
Thirsty trees drink from the earth's delicious soil like a baby drinks from its mother's breast.
Trees look up to the heavens all day, their leafy branches seemingly raised in prayer.
In the summer, trees play host to nests of robins, which sit like crowns atop the trees' leaves.
Snow falls on trees' breasts, and trees have a close, nurturing relationship with the rain.
Fools like me might try to write poetry, but our work will never match the glory of something created by God.
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“Trees” Themes
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Human Art vs. Divine Creation
"Trees" celebrates the majesty of nature, insisting that no art that humankind makes can match even the simple beauty of a tree. The poem can thus be read as a hymn of praise to God’s creation, celebrating both the wonder of the natural world and its maker.
The speaker talks plainly of poetry’s inability to capture the true beauty of nature; no poem can be “lovely as a tree,” the speaker says, before going on to describe precisely what makes trees so wonderful. For one thing, the speaker presents the tree as an essential part of a peaceful, harmonious natural world. When the tree needs nourishment, it simply drinks directly from “the earth’s sweet flowing breast.” In turn, the tree itself becomes a home for birds, and has a close “intima[cy]” with snow and rain. The tree’s loveliness thus comes in part from its interconnectedness with other parts of nature. In other words, the tree is part of a perfectly balanced natural ecosystem. And this awe-inspiring majesty, the poem insists, could only be the work of God.
The tree thus stands in testament to God’s power. To emphasize this, the speaker personifies the tree as offering up its “arms” (a.k.a. branches) towards heaven in prayer. Life, in this image, seems to offer thanks to God for its own existence. This is something that the speaker implies human art—which however beautiful, will always be inanimate—can never do. Poems, it follows, simply can’t hope to compete with such natural wonder and beauty. They are not the work of God, but rather of “fools”—people who are crazy enough to try and mimic God through an act of creation, yet who will always come up short.
The speaker includes themselves in this category, acknowledging the shortcomings of this very poem! That said, this is still a poem, a piece of art that the speaker felt compelled to write despite its inevitable failure to match God’s creation. This suggests that though human art cannot meet God’s unparalleled standards, it still has a role to play. Namely, the poem suggests that art is valuable because it is a way of appreciating and praising the divine wonder of the world. This poem itself provides a way for other people to reflect on the majesty of God’s creation, drawing the reader’s attention to the way trees express and embody God’s will.
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Trees”
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Lines 1-2
I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree."Trees" opens with a candid admission of the poem's insufficiency: the speaker is a poet who, while clearly dedicated to the act of writing poetry, feels that no "poem" could ever live up to the "love[liness]" of a tree. In two short lines, then, the poem sets up a contrast between human creativity and the natural world. For all the efforts of the human imagination, the simple beauty and majesty of a tree will always prove superior.
In theory, the poem could end here! But it doesn't, of course, hinting that there may yet be a purpose to writing poetry after all—even if it can't hope to compare to the natural world. And though the speaker has begun with a confession of inferiority, the poem still strives to construct its own form of "love[liness]." There are a number of ways in which the poem does this, even in this seemingly simple opening couplet.
First, there's a lot of sound patterning at work here, through both alliteration and consonance:
I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.It's a subtle effect, but because the lines are so short and the vocabulary so simple, the /th/ (voiced and unvoiced here) and /l/ sounds shine through. Both are gentle and soft, perhaps embodying how the speaker feels humbled before the divine presence of a tree.
Second, the meter is technically perfect. If readers scan "poem" as having two distinct syllables (as the speaker seems to intend), then both lines conform exactly to the poem's iambic tetrameter scheme (meaning each line has five poetic feet in a da-DUM rhythm):
I think | that I | shall nev- | er see
A po- | em love- | ly as | a tree.The steady meter here creates a sense of simplicity, grace, and balance. This is intended to make the reader feel that they are in the presence of the perfection. Every syllable is placed with specific intent, hinting at God's design for the world.
Finally, it's also worth noting how the pure, simple rhyme of "see" and "tree" also suggests harmony and simple beauty. The poem thus simultaneously stresses its own inevitable failure and takes on the challenge of creating something that is "lovely"—even if it won't end up as lovely as a tree.
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Lines 3-4
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the sweet earth's flowing breast;
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Lines 5-6
A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray; -
Lines 7-8
A tree that may in summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair; -
Lines 9-10
Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain. -
Lines 11-12
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.
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“Trees” Symbols
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Snow and Rain
Snow and rain are mentioned in the fifth couplet and symbolize the purity and nourishment provided by God. The Bible associates snow with spiritual cleanliness in passages like Isaiah 1:18, in which the Lord cleanses people's "scarlet" sins and turns them white as snow. Rain, for its part, is essential for life on earth to survive. It also often signifies the coming of the harvest, which in turn represents growth and nourishment.
The symbolism here is subtle, but it chimes with the way that the poem presents the tree as a kind of devotional subject, looking up toward the heavens and offering its "leafy arms" in prayer. In a way, then, the tree lives a life of spiritual commitment that makes it deserving recipient of the purifying qualities associated with snow and rain.
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“Trees” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Alliteration
Alliteration appears here and there in "Trees," adding to its general musicality. One important example is in the poem's third couplet, lines 5 and 6:
A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;The consonance of "all" helps sustain the sound between the lines here as well.
There are a couple of key effects produced by this particular sound. First, the /l/ here recalls an earlier prominent /l/ sound in the poem—"lovely" (in line 2). Remember, loveliness, as the speaker sees it, is the tree's defining feature—and /l/ is the defining sound of the word that denotes its defining feature. The /l/ sound is thus linked directly to loveliness, which, in turn, is linked to godliness. Just like, for example, the hard /k/ in "spikiness" seems to embody the attribute that it describes, the soft, gentle /l/ sound suggests to beauty, balance, and grace throughout the poem.
Second, the prominent use of alliteration here also helps depict the tree as in good, leafy health. Think about how leaves grow along the length of a branch; the many /l/ sounds here subtly suggest leafy abundance.
Later in the poem, the /l/ sound reappears in lines 9 and 10 ("lain" and "lives"), with consonance (here of "intimately") once again bolstering the effect. These /l/ sounds evoke the gentleness of snow coming to rest on the tree, and the close relationship—or natural harmony—between the tree and rain.
Another example of alliteration is in line 8's "her hair." Here, the speaker describes how robins come to nest in the personified tree during the summer months. The /h/ sound, which requires rapid exhalation on the reader's part, suggests the breathlessness of the hottest time of year—as though the poem itself momentarily tries to cool itself down.
The poem's final moment of alliteration is the shared /m/ of "made" and "me." The shared sound here reflects the fact that the speaker, as a poet, is a kind of creator—though the poem makes clear that the speaker's creative power pales in comparison to God's.
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Anaphora
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Consonance
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Enjambment
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Personification
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Juxtaposition
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“Trees” Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Shall
- Prest
- Bosom
Shall-
Will.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Trees”
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Form
"Trees" has a tight, formal structure consisting of six couplets (two-line stanzas). It's a highly organized poem, with each couplet containing a rhyming pair of lines. This rigid structure makes the poem feel more traditionally poetic; people don't casually speak in rhyming couplets, and thus the structure here reminds readers that this is a poem. This, in turn, emphasizes the fact that, though the speaker says poetry is the work of fools, the speaker feels compelled to write it anyway!
The form of the poem also suggest harmony, balance, and order. Every thing feels like its in the right place, and the neat structure of the poem mimics in the perfection of a world designed by God. Like the tree—with its specific, God-given place in nature—every formal aspect of the poem is chosen deliberately.
It's also worth noting how the poem is book-ended by two couplets that set up and restate the juxtaposition between poetry and trees (and, by extension, between human art and divine creation). This creates a subtle sense of symmetry that again evokes the beauty and perfection of God's design for the world.
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Meter
"Trees" uses iambic tetrameter throughout its 12 lines. This means there are four iambs, feet with a da-DUM rhythm, per line. The first couplet offers a typical example (and note that "poem" is meant to be read as having two distinct syllables here):
I think | that I | shall nev- | er see
A po- | em love- | ly as | a tree.The simple, reliable sound of the meter isn't the poet's way of showing off his own skill; it's instead meant to evoke the way that God made the world. Through creating a metrically faultless poem, the speaker actually praises God's divine creation. Because, though all the stresses seem to be placed meticulously in the poem, the speaker denies that any poem can ever be as "lovely" as a tree. That is, no poetic structure, however well executed, can match God's ability to create life and natural beauty.
For the most part, the poem is meant to be read with iambic stresses throughout. There are, however, two variations worth noting. Line 4 is mostly intended as iambic tetrameter, but it's also possible to read a cluster of stresses in the phrase "sweet earth's flowing breast." Arguably, these words slow the poem down, making the reader pause to consider the nurturing relationship between the soil and the tree.
The other variation is in line 11, which features a trochee (stressed-unstressed) in the first foot:
Poems | are made | by fools | like me,
It's no coincidence that this happens on the word "poems." It's like a technical flaw in the text, deliberately introduced to emphasize the inferiority of human creativity when compared to God's divine powers.
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Rhyme Scheme
"Trees" uses rhyming couplets throughout, setting up a rhyme scheme that goes:
AA BB CC DD EE AA
These are all perfect rhymes, ringing out loud and clear. This steady, predictable rhyme scheme suggests harmony and order. As with the tight meter and formal structure of the poem, the neatness of the rhyme scheme here isn't about the poet showing off. Instead, the apparent perfection of all these rhymes stands in as a small tribute to God's perfect design for the world. Just as every living creature has its place in the perfect ecosystem designed by God (according to the speaker, at least), every rhyming word falls in exactly the expected place here.
One rhyme deserves a special mention—"me"/"tree" in lines 11 and 12. This supports—and neatly represents—the poem's juxtaposition between human art and divine creation. The speaker is on one side of the rhyme with all the other "fools" who write (and write about!) poetry, while God, with the ability to create a life, is in a totally different category all of His/Her own.
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“Trees” Speaker
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The speaker in "Trees" is a poet. Through the poem's focus on nature and, in turn, how nature reflects God's majesty, it's reasonable to say that the speaker is also a religious believer. Other than that, though, the speaker intentionally shifts the focus away from themselves, preferring to use the bulk of the poem as a space to praise the "love[liness]" of the natural world.
The speaker also takes the unusual step of stressing the failure of their own craft. Though a committed and skilled poet, the speaker believes that no poem will ever match the simple beauty of a tree. Trees are alive and in perfect harmony with the world around them, and could only have been created by a divine being like God. Poems, on the other hand, are the work of "fools" like the speaker. The speaker thus feels humbled before God, and in awe of the way that nature expresses God's majesty. It's thus no wonder that most of the poem focuses on a tree rather than the speaker themselves.
Joyce Kilmer himself, of course, was a poet, and the poem is typical of his style. He was also a Catholic, and the poem is often interpreted as an expression of his own view of the world.
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“Trees” Setting
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The poem doesn't have a strongly defined setting beyond the natural world itself. There is no suggestion that this is one particular tree, though it does seem to exist in a seasonal climate: the fourth stanza depicts the tree in summer, offering its branches as a nesting place for robins, while in the fifth, the poem alludes to winter and autumn. The tree is one element in a divinely designed ecosystem. It's always in touch with its surroundings, both drawing nourishment from them and, in turn, providing shelter.
It's also worth noting that there is something distinctly Eden-like about the poem's setting. There is no hint of the modern world—no human technology, or, apart from the speaker, even any human beings. This creates an atmosphere of natural paradise, drawing the reader's focus to the divinity of God's creation.
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Literary and Historical Context of “Trees”
Literary Context
"Trees" was first published in 1913 in an early issue of Poetry magazine, and was subsequently included in Joyce Kilmer's 1914 collection Trees and Other Poems. It is by far Kilmer's most popular poem.
Critics often deemed Kilmer's poetry to be slight and sentimental. His style—with its pure rhymes and reliable meter—is curiously out of step with the artistic atmosphere of his time. Kilmer's poetry has more in common with the strict, stilted tone of Victorian poets than it does with the innovations of his Modernist contemporaries like T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound.
In fact, Kilmer himself cited the Victorian poet and critic Coventry Patmore as a major influence, and also drew inspiration from the religious sensibilities of 17th-century Metaphysical poets like John Donne. In his focus on and idealization of the natural world, Kilmer also has something in common with poets of the Romantic era—writers like William Wordsworth, William Blake, and so on.
"Trees" also sits neatly in the middle of a Venn diagram between two rich poetic traditions: nature poetry and religious poetry. In this poem, Kilmer praises nature in order to celebrate of God, seeing evidence of a divine hand in nature's glory. The poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins often does something similar (though Hopkins performs considerably more risky feats with his language). It's worth comparing this poem to "Pied Beauty" or "The Windhover" to see another take on the idea that nature demonstrates, expresses, and even praises God's majesty.
Historical Context
"Trees" was published in an era of vast, wide-sweeping societal changes. In October 1913, the year the poem appeared in Poetry magazine, Ford Motors Inc. established the first moving assembly line, decreasing the turnaround time of their flagship Model T car and ushering in an era of mass production and industrialization. Not long before that, the ideas of Frederick Taylor, an American engineer, had started to change the nature of work and labor towards a more science-based, goal-oriented system—to the detriment, some would say, of the quality of working life.
Of course, none of this appears in Kilmer's poem, but it's notable that, in order to present a vision of godly majesty, the speaker presents a scene that has little to do with the modern world. "Trees" represents a perhaps naive longing for a return to a natural, Eden-like paradise.
The poem also appeared not long before the onset of the First World War. It's impossible to know how the sheer devastation of that conflict would have influenced Kilmer's poetry; he was killed in action in the Second Battle of the Marne in France in the summer of 1918.
Kilmer was a Roman Catholic, and his religion clearly influenced the worldview presented by the poem. In the third couplet, for example, the tree raises its "arms" (i.e., its branches) towards the heavens in a gesture of prayer. The tree, then, is both a product of God's supreme creation and an expression or celebration of it at the same time. The idea that God's majesty is expressed and manifested in the world itself is known as divine immanence. In other words, God is both the creator of all things, and in all things.
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More “Trees” Resources
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External Resources
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Kilmer's Life and Work — Read a longer biography of Joyce Kilmer over at the Poetry Foundation.
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"Trees" Out Loud — Listen to a reading of the poem, complete with illustrations.
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More Poems About Trees — Trees have a long, rich tradition in poetry; check out more poems on the subject here.
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The Tragedy of Joyce Kilmer — An in-depth article about Kilmer's life, work, and tragic early death.
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The Platters Sing "Trees" — Listen to a musical version of the poem by The Platters, a famous American vocal group formed in 1952.
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