The speaker talks to the tree outside his window as if it were a quiet companion. He lowers the window at night, but he refuses to draw a curtain between them—he wants the tree there, watching or just present. At first the tree seems dreamlike and vague, its rustling leaves not quite profound. But then the speaker remembers seeing the tree battered by storms, and he imagines the tree has seen him asleep, caught in his own inner turmoil, “all but lost.” In the last stanza, he reflects that Fate put their heads together: the tree’s head is concerned with outer weather, his with inner weather. The mood is intimate, lonely, and tender—a sense of kinship between a man and a tree, both exposed to forces they cannot control, and both in some way witnesses to each other’s struggles.
Tree at My Window — Summary
Tree at my window, window tree, My sash is lowered when night comes on; But let there never be curtain drawn Between you and me.
Vague dream-head lifted out of the ground, And thing next most diffuse to cloud, Not all your light tongues talking aloud Could be profound.
But tree, I have seen you taken and tossed, And if you have seen me when I slept, You have seen me when I was taken and swept And all but lost.
That day she put our heads together, Fate had her imagination about her, Your head so much concerned with outer, Mine with inner, weather.