A long, sturdy life isn’t what makes someone truly better, this brief lyric insists. An oak might tower for three hundred years, but it ends as a dry, bald log—a hollow endurance. The speaker’s affection goes to a daylily that blooms in May and dies that night. It’s ‘the plant and flower of light,’ and its beauty surpasses the oak’s because it is so intensely alive in its brief moment. There’s a quiet reverence in this vision, not grief. The final couplet seals the insight: we find true beauty in small proportions, and life can reach perfection in short measures. The poem feels like a small, steady hand on your shoulder, reminding you that fleeting things can be whole, and that a flash of light is worth more than centuries of slow decay.
It Is Not Growing Like A Tree — Summary
It is not growing like a tree In bulk doth make Man better be; Or standing long an oak, three hundred year, To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sere: A lily of a day Is fairer far in May, Although it fall and die that night— It was the plant and flower of light. In small proportions we just beauties see; And in short measures life may perfect be.