They came and did some work on the tall plane trees in my road back in the spring. Men swarmed up on ropes and cut off all the small branches, leaving the trees black and stumpy against the blue sky.
Those trees are so high, they must be older than a lot of the local buildings that surround them. I don’t know just why it had to be done; there will be green shoots again, in time, I thought, but will they come this year?
At least the trees, even in their denuded state, were still there. During the summer, helped by the rain perhaps, they became bushy and green again, and now the leaves are starting to change colour.
You can see why the whole episode made me think of the poem below. Writing towards the end of his life, William Cowper (1731–1800) uses the image of the felled trees replaced by newly grown ones to reflect on the passing of time and life itself, and the impermanence of all things.
The Poplar Field by William Cowper
The poplars are felled; farewell to the shade
And the whispering sound of the cool colonnade;
The winds play no longer and sing in the leaves,
Nor Ouse on his bosom their image receives.
Twelve years have elapsed since I last took a view
Of my favourite field and the bank where they grew;
And now in the grass behold they are laid,
And the tree is my seat that once lent me a shade.
The blackbird has fled to another retreat
Where the hazels afford him a screen from the heat,
And the scene where his melody charmed me before,
Resounds with his sweet-flowing ditty no more.
My fugitive years are all hasting away,
And I must ere long lie as lowly as they,
With a turf on my breast and a stone at my head
Ere another such grove shall arise in its stead.
’Tis a sight to engage me if anything can,
To muse on the perishing pleasures of man;
Though his life be a dream, his enjoyments, I see,
Have a being less durable even than he.
The Good Reader 