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“The Trees” Introduction
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The British poet Philip Larkin included "The Trees" in his book High Windows, which was published in 1974. The speaker sees spring's budding trees as "a kind of grief." The speaker says that this isn't borne from envy about the fact that the leaves are born anew each year while human beings get old; the trees themselves age, too, the speaker points out, even if their leaves re-bloom each year. Still, the fresh growth of spring reminds the speaker to cast of the past and live in the present—even in the face of inevitable mortality.
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“The Trees” Summary
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The trees are beginning to bloom, their leaves slowly unfolding like a word on the tip of someone's tongue. As the new buds open luxuriously and stretch into leaves, their green color feels like a kind of sadness.
Does this sadness have to do with the fact that the leaves are reborn each spring while we, as human beings, just keep getting older? No, the trees die just like we do; they just play a trick every year by making it seem like they're young, even as the rings in their trunks reveal that they're actually getting older.
Even so, the trees tirelessly grow their thick, lush fortress of green every May. "The past is dead," they seem to say, "begin anew."
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“The Trees” Themes
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Mortality and Renewal
“The Trees” is, in part, about the sense of renewal that comes along with spring, but the poem isn’t all that joyous or celebratory—at least not on its surface. The speaker has a complicated reaction to the newly blossoming trees, seeing the “recent buds” as “a kind of grief.” This is because each year’s leaves eventually die, so they feel to the speaker like a reminder of mortality. And yet, these leaves are also a reminder that life is full of new beginnings and opportunities to start "afresh." The poem therefore both laments the inevitability of death and celebrates the opportunity for renewal in the present.
The speaker is wary of the new life that blossoms every spring, seeing more in the “recent buds” than freshness and beauty. “The trees are coming into leaf,” the poem begins, and though readers might expect the next line to say something about how lovely this is, the speaker instead compares the budding trees to “something almost being said.” Rather than admiring the new buds, the speaker feels like they’re withholding something—more specifically, that there’s “a kind of grief” lying behind the season’s pleasant façade.
That grief, in turn, stems from the fact that even these symbols of rebirth and renewal will themselves one day die. Spring typically makes people think of youth and new beginnings, but they make the speaker think of the fact that even those new beginnings will someday come to an end!
The new buds might look young and fresh, but they’re also a reminder that the previous year’s buds are dead. The growth rings of the trees to which these buds are attached speak to the fact that “looking new” is a kind of “yearly trick”; in reality, the buds simply die each year as the trees grow older and older. The presence of these youthful buds is, ironically enough, a tangible sign that everything is subject to the ravages of time—including human beings.
And yet, the poem isn’t totally pessimistic. The trees still bloom in “fullgrown thickness every May,” renewing themselves even in the face of time’s relentless march. To the speaker, the trees’ renewal is a call to “begin afresh”: to accept the inevitable passage of time and not dwell on the past. In other words, they encourage the speaker to live life fully in the present.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 1-12
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “The Trees”
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Lines 1-4
The trees are ...
... kind of grief.The poem opens with trees "coming into leaf," which means that it's spring and that everything is beginning to blossom. The speaker describes this in line 3, saying that the "recent buds relax and spread." The word "relax" hints at a sense of relief, as if the buds have been tensely waiting all winter to finally open up and "spread" themselves into lush green leaves.
Because poems about spring are, very often, celebratory or happy in nature, many readers will probably assume going into "The Trees" that it will be a good-natured poem about the beauty of budding trees and the excitement of spring. However, things take an unexpected turn at the end of this opening quatrain ("The trees are [...] of grief"), when the speaker metaphorically suggests that the "greenness" of the new leaves is "a kind of grief." At this moment, the speaker projects feelings of discontent onto the otherwise happy, care-free sight of budding trees.
This actually makes sense alongside the simile the speaker uses in the poem's first two lines:
The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;By comparing the budding trees to "something almost being said," the speaker subtly implies that there's something lurking behind their beauty. In the same way that it's possible to sense when people are just barely holding themselves back from saying something meaningful, the speaker feels as if the buds are hiding something.
Behind the buds' surface-level beauty, the poem intimates, lies "grief" and sadness. It's not yet clear why, exactly, the speaker feels this way. At this point, then, the only thing that's clear is that "The Trees" will take an unconventional, nuanced look at the sense of renewal associated with spring.
These opening lines also establish the poem's use of iambic tetrameter, a meter in which each line contains four iambs: feet consisting of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable (da-DUM). Look, for example, at the first two lines:
The trees | are com- | ing in- | to leaf
Like some- | thing al- | most be- | ing said;This gives the language a consistent, plodding rhythm, perhaps reflecting the speaker's lack of enthusiasm about the changing seasons. Whereas free verse might allow the language here to feel exuberant and frolicking, the poem's use of iambic tetrameter gently calms it down, giving the speaker's tone a somewhat subdued, structured quality that matches the hesitance to view spring as a time of joy and excitement. The ABBA rhyme scheme at play in this stanza also contributes to this musical yet methodical feel.
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Lines 5-8
Is it that ...
... rings of grain.
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Lines 9-10
Yet still the ...
... thickness every May. -
Lines 11-12
Last year is ...
... afresh, afresh, afresh.
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“The Trees” Symbols
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Spring, Trees, and New Leaves
The newly budded leaves symbolize renewal and new beginnings. The sight of newly budding trees is always a sure sign of spring, a season associated with happiness and a feeling of rebirth. But the speaker also sees them as reminder of time's relentless forward march. This then makes the speaker think of mortality and getting older.
But the trees themselves, the speaker realizes, continue to thrash about in "fullgrown thickness every May." Even though they're constantly getting closer to death (just like human beings), they keep thriving. In this way, they come to symbolize a certain resiliency, demonstrating that it's possible to prosper and "begin afresh" even in the face of mortality.
Where this symbol appears in the poem:- Lines 1-4
- Lines 5-8
- Lines 9-12
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“The Trees” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Simile
The speaker uses a simile to compare the newly budding trees to "something almost being said"—they're like a word on the tip of the tongue. This suggests that the leaves haven't yet fully budded, infusing the poem's opening with a sense of anticipation. This simile implies that the speaker is anxious to see the leaves come into full bloom.
Taken alongside the rest of the poem, this simile also subtly hints at the speaker's feeling of suspicion or cynicism about what spring really symbolizes. It's almost as if the speaker feels like the trees are hiding something, or that they're withholding some kind of important information.
That something, in turn, is the idea that time affects everything. While most people see new leaves as a sign of rebirth and youthfulness, the speaker knows that springtime blossoms will eventually die, meaning that they actually symbolize the process of aging and mortality. The budding leaves are therefore a "yearly trick," since they trick people into thinking about new life instead of death. This, it seems, is what the leaves aren't saying: that all things die, even things that look fresh and new.
Where simile appears in the poem:- Lines 1-2: “The trees are coming into leaf / Like something almost being said;”
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Metaphor
Unlock all 340 words of this analysis of Metaphor in “The Trees,” and get the poetic device analyses for every poem we cover.
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Personification
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Sibilance
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Assonance
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Consonance
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Irony
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Rhetorical Question
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Caesura
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Epizeuxis
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“The 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.
- Coming Into Leaf
- Buds
- Rings of Grain
- Unresting
- Castles
- Thresh
- Afresh
Coming Into Leaf-
(Location in poem: Line 1: “coming into leaf”)
Blossoming.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “The Trees”
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Form
"The Trees" is a 12-line poem broken into three quatrains (or four-line stanzas). This simple, straightforward structure makes the poem feel very even and measured. This isn't a poem about intense emotion; it's about an underlying feeling of sadness, so the poem's subdued, uncomplicated structure helps convey the speaker's reflective and melancholic mood.
The three stanzas here also neatly break down the speaker's emotional development:
- In the first stanza ("The trees [...] of grief"), for example, the speaker remarks upon the budding trees and says that their "greenness" feels like "grief."
- Then, in the second stanza ("Is it [..] of grain"), the speaker tries to put a finger on why this is the case, wondering if it's because the leaves are "born again" each year while human beings continue to age.
- Finally, in the third stanza ("Yet still [...] afresh"), the speaker comes to see the trees as symbols of renewal in the face of mortality.
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Meter
The poem is written in iambic tetrameter. This means that each line contains four iambs, feet consisting of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable: da-DUM. Take, for example, the first two lines:
The trees | are com- | ing in- | to leaf
Like some- | thing al- | most be- | ing said;This creates a consistent, bouncing rhythm that both draws readers into the poem and creates a sense of predictability. This is appropriate given that "The Trees" is about the inevitable arrival of spring and the steady march of time.
The poem sticks closely to its meter for the most part, making it all the more noticeable when the speaker does vary the rhythm. Line 11 is a good example of this. The first foot is rather ambiguous and can be read either as a trochee (stressed-unstressed) or a spondee (stressed-stressed):
Last year | is dead, || they seem | to say,
Or:
Last year | is dead, || they seem | to say,
Either way, the fact that the line begins with a stressed syllable emphasizes the word "last," calling attention to the idea that the past is gone and that, as a result, there's nothing to do but live in the present.
The final line is then purely iambic:
Begin | afresh, || afresh, || afresh.
The word "afresh" has a clear rhythm to it, and the fact that the speaker repeats it three times in a row only emphasizes its swaying bounce. This, in turn, adds intensity and urgency to the trees' call to start anew.
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Rhyme Scheme
Each of the poem's three quatrains follows the same rhyme scheme, in which the first line rhymes with the last line, and the two middle lines rhyme. The entire poem can be mapped out like this:
ABBA CDDC EFFE
This rhyme scheme is tidy and well-organized, adding to the poem's thoughtful, measured tone.
The rhymes here also emphasize several important words. For instance, the word "leaf" in line 1 rhymes with "grief" in line 4. This highlights the unexpected connection the speaker makes between beautiful new leaves and sadness—a connection that stands in contrast to the joy and excitement most people associate with spring.
On a simpler level, this consistent rhyme scheme just sounds good. It pairs well with the da-DUM da-DUM rhythm of the iambic tetrameter, and it accentuates the speaker's strict adherence to the poem's form. And this, in turn, gives the poem a pleasantly predictable feeling that pulls readers from one line to the next.
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“The Trees” Speaker
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There isn't much identifying information about the poem's speaker, though many readers take this speaker to be Phillip Larkin himself.
The only thing that's clear is that spring reminds the speaker of the passage of time and, thus, that everyone and everything is constantly inching closer to death. Keeping the speaker nonspecific allows the poem's message feels universal and timeless.
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“The Trees” Setting
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The poem takes place in early spring, but beyond that it could pretty much be set anywhere (anyplace, of course, with trees). This, like the lack of a specific speaker, helps to keep the poem's message universal. This is a poem about time and mortality in general, and it applies to everyone, everywhere.
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Literary and Historical Context of “The Trees”
Literary Context
Philip Larkin was one of the 20th century's most famous British poets, and often wrote poems with a rather bleak, cynical outlook. He frequently expressed skepticism toward love, for example, as in his well-known poem "The Whitsun Weddings." He also took an unsparing look at the idea of family in "This Be The Verse."
"The Trees," published in 1974, has a lot in common with another of Larkin's most celebrated poems: "Coming," which is also about what it feels like to observe the first signs of spring. In both poems, the speaker seems hesitant to embrace the joy and excitement that most people feel when the weather begins to turn. And yet, both poems still manage to capture a sense of renewal and an appreciation for the natural world's constant state of change—even as they challenge stereotypical or clichéd attitudes surrounding the season.
Many critics associate Larkin's gloomy outlook with a quintessentially British sensibility, since his writing was simultaneously glum and sharply observant. Because of this, he's often considered an important member of the Movement, a group in the 1950s that was made up of British writers like Donald Davie, Thom Gunn, Kingsley Amis, and Ted Hughes. The Movement is a little hard to define, given that the main thing that held it together was a certain "Englishness"—the same biting, cynical, and quintessentially British style that characterizes most of Philip Larkin's work.
Historical Context
"The Trees" appeared in Larkin's final collection of poetry, High Windows, which was published in 1974. This means the poem came out in a time of cultural upheaval and revolution, when people across Europe and the United States began to celebrate equality, free love, and artistic expression. This period also made up the final years of the Vietnam War, which ended in 1975.
Of course, England didn't send troops to Vietnam, but the counter-cultural movement of the 1960s and '70s was very focused on the importance of peace, and this message certainly made its way into the British mainstream (consider, for example, the many anti-war songs written by famous English musicians like John Lennon).
However, "The Trees" doesn't really engage with its own cultural moment. Instead, it's a timeless poem that transcends the period in which it was written. After all, it's about spring, mortality, and new beginnings—all things that pretty much apply to any time period! And yet, although it's unlikely that the poem itself was inspired by its historical context, its message to "begin afresh" does feel relevant to the period, since the 1970s saw so much change.
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More “The Trees” Resources
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External Resources
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"Rings of Grain" — Learn a little about how to determine the age of a tree by studying the rings in its trunk: a practice known as dendrochronology!
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Portraits of the Artist — The National Portrait Gallery has several portraits of Philip Larkin, including a painting and several photographs.
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Hear the Poem — Listen to Philip Larkin himself read "The Trees."
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About the Poet — For more information about Philip Larkin, check out this brief overview of his life and work.
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The Paris Review Interview — Read The Paris Review's "The Art of Poetry" interview with Philip Larkin.
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LitCharts on Other Poems by Philip Larkin
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