The speaker stands in Glencree with his arms wrapped around an oak tree, leaning against its bark while a lark sings and light and shadow move over it. The moment feels intimate and peaceful—he treats the tree almost like a companion, close enough to feel its solid presence.
Then the mood shifts. He imagines a future when those same oaks will be cut into black boards placed over his body. In Mount Jerome cemetery, he says, he’ll lie as a “poor wretch” with worms forever. The tone is blunt, even darkly comic, but not quite bitter. There’s tenderness mixed with grim acceptance: the living tree that comforts him now will eventually become the wood that encloses his dead body. It leaves a strange, quiet unease—beauty and decay held together.