Progress
The gracious trees drooped feathery limbs
Along the quiet street;
The leaves whispered tiny hymns
In summer’s rain and heat.
Came loud strange men with coils of wire
And posts of foreign wood;
The wind, each leaf in his choir,
Tiptoe, listening, stood.
The strangers went their way; the breeze
Mourned, and the leaves mourned too:
Holes had been hacked in all the trees
To let the wire go through.