Trees by Joyce Kilmer

Born in New Jersey, his full name was Alfred Joyce Kilmer. While serving as a sergeant in an American infantry regiment in World War I, Kilmer was killed at the Second Battle of Marne in 1918. He was 31.

Trees contains 12 lines divided into six stanzas. Lines 2 and 11 contain seven syllables; the others have eight syllables, structured as iambic tetrameter, whose meter is ta TUM | ta TUM | ta TUM | ta TUM. Trees' rhyme scheme consists of rhyming couplets rendered as "aa bb cc dd ee aa."

In Trees, Kilmer seeks to show how man-made objects cannot compare in beauty to those made by G-d.

Trees
(For Mrs. Henry Mills Alden)

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth's sweet flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in Summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.