Advice to Maple-Trees

O little maple-trees, Slender and unkempt, looking with shaggy askance Upon the moon-spiked solitude; O little maple-trees, Growing a little toward the sky That touches you to all eyes save your own, You rattle insistently for wings, But wings could never tear The stain of earth from your feet: The earth that gnaws at you until Your wing-cries strike the autumn night. You see, with me, this crescent moon Juggled on the tawny fingertip Of a running cloud. The touch of your desire, or its fall, Would but be symbols of an equal death.