Classic Poem

Elms are the settlers close memorials—
Gray sagging roofs, old lilacs, boulder walls
And the green elms with all their leaf-tongued shade,
These are four ghosts about old tombs arrayed
Like Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John
To bless the beds the dead lie on.
Under green elms they preached to Indians,
Under green elms they halted in campaigns,
And there is one old elm with two scythes grown
Deep in its crotch where hands long since turned bone
Hastily left them, called in haste away
From farm and field and the long reaping day.

Green elms, lilacs and roofs and boulder walls
Are still the settlers four memorials.