The Sound of Trees I forget their names, and I forget their faces, A forest makes shadows dance in tired rays,
And through time, day shall fall, forgotten places And all we ought to walk shall shadow us—
A gust shall pierce the while musings we doubt do.

The sound of trees shall sound a barely thought, A round of cracking wood shall crack and lift each door,
And every day I think there grows
That deepened sound which leans against the face, We pitifully breathe and, all of us, forget, This space abducted into slumber’s case.

But you shall wear softer wishes,
To breathe like we have wandered, judging—
This path I sought; like every dream that lies over a hill Shall fall and trickle down just like the hill itself. How loose the bearing shelters ever—the sound of trees, Those lovely lights of parts through which we climb, How rare the open flames in these wild embrace shall hover.

So bare is this blackness over each new changing day,
That shallow eyes between those shapes behind each cut We leave—like haze forgotten in our waking moments. Thus, each soft flicker shall remind my soul
And joys unheard shall come again and keep beneath our care,
Where each tree’s sound retains a distance and a spark, The dust; the light that shines above the forest floor.

Then let the round robin in shapes reside in echoes
As memories bloom strangely, street by street, We danced that dance which living waits,
I’ve all but lost those old faces we knew in woods. Where have those notes of life gone, where shall the evening hear,
And where shall I see that spark return and rise Like rivers through time that long outweigh the brinks.

When soft I hear that sound beyond the trunks again,
My dirge shall be a way of reaping love anew. In edges quick I shall respond as loving flows—
When wheels have turned first come the softer sounds of trees!

• Robert Frost