“Fire he sang,
that trees fear, and I, a tree, rejoiced in its flames.”
A Tree Telling of Orpheus (1968)
Context: Fire he sang,
that trees fear, and I, a tree, rejoiced in its flames.
New buds broke forth from me though it was full summer.
As though his lyre (now I knew its name)
were both frost and fire, its chords flamed
up to the crown of me.
I was seed again.
I was fern in the swamp.
I was coal.
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Denise Levertov 49
Poet 1923–1997Related quotes

A Tree Telling of Orpheus (1968)
Context: Then as he sang
it was no longer sounds only that made the music:
he spoke, and as no tree listens I listened, and language
came into my roots
out of the earth,
into my bark
out of the air,
into the pores of my greenest shoots
gently as dew
and there was no word he sang but I knew its meaning.

Source: The Monkey Grammarian (1974), Ch. 9

“These I see,
Blazing through all eternity,
A fire-winged sign, a glorious tree!”
Young Adventure (1918), The Quality of Courage
Context: It is not given me to trace
The lovely laughter of that face,
Like a clear brook most full of light,
Or olives swaying on a height,
So silver they have wings, almost;
Like a great word once known and lost
And meaning all things. Nor her voice
A happy sound where larks rejoice,
Her body, that great loveliness,
The tender fashion of her dress,
I may not paint them.
These I see,
Blazing through all eternity,
A fire-winged sign, a glorious tree!

Autumn Woods. Reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Attributed

“I don't want to be a tree; I want to be its meaning.”
Source: My Name is Red
“And elm-trees, massed like ostrich feather plumes,
Are streaked and shot with fire.”
Poem: Lost Lane

“I speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongues.”
Variant: I speak for the trees!
Source: The Lorax

Journal of Discourses 12:354 (February 24, 1869).
Joseph Smith Jr.'s First Vision