The speaker talks to young maple trees as if they were restless, awkward creatures, staring sideways at a lonely, moonlit landscape. They yearn to fly and rattle “for wings,” but they are held fast by the earth that feeds and eventually destroys them. Their rustling is both a wingless cry and a sound of autumn coming. The speaker seems tender toward this longing, but also clear-eyed: even if they could escape their roots, it would not save them from death. The mood is quiet, a little mournful, and strangely beautiful, mixing the crescent moon balanced on a cloud with the sadness of being rooted and aging. In the end, it suggests that human desire for transcendence has the same beauty and the same limit—everything that reaches or falls meets an equal end.
Advice to Maple-Trees — Summary
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.