By moonlight, a familiar group of trees suddenly looks wrong. The speaker realizes that one tree is gone, and the tree that grew beside it is now lonely and slowly dying as well. The first part of the poem is quiet and mournful, but the second half turns stranger. In the moonlight, the dead tree seems to return as a ghostly presence—a blue, smoke-like shape hovering over the grass, rustling through broken branches, with something small and eerie moving and cheeping inside its shade. Fletcher creates a mood that is both sorrowful and unsettling. The absence of the tree is not just an empty space; it becomes a haunting, as if the lost tree still lingers around the one left behind. The speaker feels that loss deeply, caught between grief for what is gone and unease at what seems to remain.
The Trees — Summary
When the moonlight strikes the tree-tops, The trees are not the same.
I know they are not the same, Because there is one tree that is missing, And it stood so long by another, That the other, feeling lonely, Now is slowly dying too.
When the moonlight strikes the tree-tops That dead tree comes back; Like a great blue sphere of smoke Half buoyed, half ravelling on the grass, Rustling through frayed branches, Something eerily cheeping through it, Something creeping through its shade.