The mountain Ash. (Pyrus Aucuparia)

The Mountain Ash.
(Pyrus Aucuparia)
I.

I love the Mountain Ash—the Rowntree[1] dear—
Not merely for some of my ancestry
Taking their surname from that lovely tree,
But for its beauty. ’T is a sight to cheer
The poet in the early Summer days; 5
Its light green leaves and bunches of white flowers
Are pleasant to the eye: when Autumn pours
Its ripen’d corn and fruits, and thus repays
The labours of the year, its berries red
Come teaching us like Christ, that corn and fruits 10
And all the best of our most cultured roots
Are not the only things on which are fed
The sterling man or woman, but that we
Must hold the very universe in fee.


Our foolish fathers deem’d it had the power 15
To shield them from the witches’ wicked arts;
For then had Superstition’s poisen’d darts
Enter’d their brains, and Ignorance did tower
Over mankind with most unholy sway.
The hetacombs were slaughter’d at the shine 20
Of foul Injustice, deem’d by them divine,
Which Knowledge happily has destoy’d for aye.
In boyhood from such boughs I whistles made;
Now I would scorn to injure the dear tree,
It is an object so beloved by me; 25
And things of beauty from the mind ne’er fade.
Leave its bright scarlet berries for the birds
Whose songs are sweeter e’en than the poet’s words.

George Markham Tweddell
[Sonnets on Trees and Flowers, pp. 51-52]
[[1] The tree’s name gave rise to the local surname
‘Rowntree’ and was the maiden name of GMT’s paternal
grandmother, Camilla (1774-1849) from Middleton-on-
Leven.]