“I think that I shall never see a poem as lovely as a tree”, are the first lines of a poem by which author?

“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”. This is the first stanza of a poem titled “Trees”, by the American poet, Joyce Kilmer (1866-1918). It was first published in “Poetry: A Magazine of Verse” and then included in Kilmer’s collection, “Trees and Other Poems” published in 1914.

The poem is a simple composition of 12 lines of rhyming couplets of iambic tetrameter verse.

Though he was a prolific poet whose works celebrated the common beauty of the natural world as well as his Roman Catholic faith, Kilmer was also a journalist, literary critic, lecturer, and editor. At the time of his deployment to Europe during WWI, Kilmer was considered the leading American Roman Catholic poet and lecturer of his generation. The poem continues with the second stanza “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.”

He enlisted in the New York National Guard and was deployed to France in 1917. His service as a soldier came to an unfortunate end when he was killed by a sniper’s bullet at the Second Battle of the Marne in 1918 at the age of 31. The final stanza reflects his appreciation for nature grounded by his religious faith. “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”.