The Holly-Tree

Robert Southey (1774–1843)

O READER! hast thou ever stood to see

The holly-tree?

The eye that contemplates it well perceives

Its glossy leaves

Ordered 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 unarmed 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.