In a rural crossroads, aspens chatter about rain day and night, their leaves never silent except in winter. Nearby, a smithy rings with hammer blows and an inn buzzes with clinking glasses and stray songs—sounds that have filled the air for fifty years. Yet the aspens’ whisper cuts through all that noise. When the buildings are empty and the road deserted, the trees seem to call ghosts into the moonlit or storm-dark crossroads, making it a ghostly room. The speaker says this would happen even without any houses near. The aspens shake their leaves regardless of weather or listener; we might hear them but rarely truly listen, much like his own poems. In the final stanza, he aligns himself with the trees: as long as he and they have leaves, he cannot help but be an aspen, ceaselessly and unreasonably grieving—or so men think who prefer a different, less sorrowful tree. The mood is one of quiet, stubborn melancholy, a grief that hums under everyday noise and turns a familiar place spectral.
Aspens — Summary
ALL day and night, save winter, every weather, Above the inn, the smithy, and the shop, The aspens at the cross-roads talk together Of rain, until their last leaves fall from the top.
Out of the blacksmith's cavern comes the ringing Of hammer, shoe, and anvil; out of the inn The clink, the hum, the roar, the random singing-- The sounds that for these fifty years have been.
The whisper of the aspens is not drowned, And over lightless pane and footless road, Empty as sky, with every other sound Not ceasing, calls their ghosts from their abode,
A silent smithy, a silent inn, nor fails In the bare moonlight or the thick-furred gloom, In tempest or the night of nightingales, To turn the cross-roads to a ghostly room.
And it would be the same were no house near. Over all sorts of weather, men, and times, Aspens must shake their leaves and men may hear But need not listen, more than to my rhymes.
Whatever wind blows, while they and I have leaves We cannot other than an aspen be That ceaselessly, unreasonably grieves, Or so men think who like a different tree.