The Full Text of “The Trees are Down”
—and he cried with a loud voice:
Hurt not the earth, neither the sea, nor the trees—
(Revelation)
1They are cutting down the great plane-trees at the end of the gardens.
2For days there has been the grate of the saw, the swish of the branches as they fall,
3The crash of the trunks, the rustle of trodden leaves,
4With the ‘Whoops’ and the ‘Whoas,’ the loud common talk, the loud common laughs of the men, above it all.
5I remember one evening of a long past Spring
6Turning in at a gate, getting out of a cart, and finding a large dead rat in the mud of the drive.
7I remember thinking: alive or dead, a rat was a god-forsaken thing,
8But at least, in May, that even a rat should be alive.
9The week’s work here is as good as done. There is just one bough
10 On the roped bole, in the fine grey rain,
11 Green and high
12 And lonely against the sky.
13 (Down now!—)
14 And but for that,
15 If an old dead rat
16Did once, for a moment, unmake the Spring, I might never have thought of him again.
17It is not for a moment the Spring is unmade to-day;
18These were great trees, it was in them from root to stem:
19When the men with the ‘Whoops’ and the ‘Whoas’ have carted the whole of the whispering loveliness away
20Half the Spring, for me, will have gone with them.
21It is going now, and my heart has been struck with the hearts of the planes;
22Half my life it has beat with these, in the sun, in the rains,
23 In the March wind, the May breeze,
24In the great gales that came over to them across the roofs from the great seas.
25 There was only a quiet rain when they were dying;
26 They must have heard the sparrows flying,
27And the small creeping creatures in the earth where they were lying—
28 But I, all day, I heard an angel crying:
29 ‘Hurt not the trees.’
The Full Text of “The Trees are Down”
—and he cried with a loud voice:
Hurt not the earth, neither the sea, nor the trees—
(Revelation)
1They are cutting down the great plane-trees at the end of the gardens.
2For days there has been the grate of the saw, the swish of the branches as they fall,
3The crash of the trunks, the rustle of trodden leaves,
4With the ‘Whoops’ and the ‘Whoas,’ the loud common talk, the loud common laughs of the men, above it all.
5I remember one evening of a long past Spring
6Turning in at a gate, getting out of a cart, and finding a large dead rat in the mud of the drive.
7I remember thinking: alive or dead, a rat was a god-forsaken thing,
8But at least, in May, that even a rat should be alive.
9The week’s work here is as good as done. There is just one bough
10 On the roped bole, in the fine grey rain,
11 Green and high
12 And lonely against the sky.
13 (Down now!—)
14 And but for that,
15 If an old dead rat
16Did once, for a moment, unmake the Spring, I might never have thought of him again.
17It is not for a moment the Spring is unmade to-day;
18These were great trees, it was in them from root to stem:
19When the men with the ‘Whoops’ and the ‘Whoas’ have carted the whole of the whispering loveliness away
20Half the Spring, for me, will have gone with them.
21It is going now, and my heart has been struck with the hearts of the planes;
22Half my life it has beat with these, in the sun, in the rains,
23 In the March wind, the May breeze,
24In the great gales that came over to them across the roofs from the great seas.
25 There was only a quiet rain when they were dying;
26 They must have heard the sparrows flying,
27And the small creeping creatures in the earth where they were lying—
28 But I, all day, I heard an angel crying:
29 ‘Hurt not the trees.’
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“The Trees are Down” Introduction
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Charlotte Mew wrote “The Trees are Down” in the 1920s after watching workers saw down plane trees in London’s Euston Square Gardens. The poem’s speaker poignantly narrates the trees’ slow death while positioning them within a wider network of living things. This free verse poem has a distinctive structure characterized by long, sprawling lines that resemble roots and branches. Environmental concerns are a common thread throughout Mew’s body of poetic work, which often examines the complexities of humankind’s relationship with nature. "The Trees are Down" appears in The Rambling Sailor, Mew’s posthumous collection of poetry, which was published in 1929.
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“The Trees are Down” Summary
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An unspecified group of people is cutting down grand trees at the furthermost part of a group of gardens. They have been doing so for days, causing a ruckus that includes saws grinding against the trees, branches swishing to the ground, crashing tree trunks, and leaves that rustle as they are trampled. These sounds are accompanied by the "whoops" and "whoas" of male workers who talk and laugh crudely and loudly as they cut down the trees, their voices dominating the site.
The speaker is reminded of a Spring night years ago, when the speaker entered a gate, stepped out of a carriage, and came upon a big rat lying dead in a muddy driveway. The speaker recalls thinking that rats are wretched no matter if they are alive or dead, but that even a rat ought to be alive in May.
The workers' task for the week is drawing to a close—essentially done. There is a single limb remaining on the last tree trunk that is marked with rope (to designate that it will be cut down). The tall, green branch is lonely in the grey sky, from which delicate raindrops fall. A worker calls out, "Down now!," indicating that the men are cutting down the final tree. If it wasn't for this incident with the trees, the speaker would never have thought of the rat again, as it disrupted Spring's atmosphere of liveliness and renewal for just a moment.
However, on this day, that atmosphere is disrupted on a much greater scale. The trees that have been cut down were large and magnificent, and Spring lived within them, from the trees' roots to their stems. From the speaker's perspective, half of the Spring will disappear when the loud, crude men carry the rustling, beautiful remnants of the trees away.
Now the trees' remains are being carted off, and this hurts the speaker's heart, as if the speaker has been struck to the core like the trees have. The speaker's heart has beat along with those of the trees for half of the speaker's life, across many seasons, weathering March winds, May breezes, and powerful gusts that traveled to the trees from the sea across rooftops. There was only the quiet sound of rain as the trees were dying. The trees must have heard sparrows flitting about and little creatures creeping through the earth where they lay. All day the speaker heard the cries of an angel, calling out "Hurt not the trees."
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“The Trees are Down” Themes
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The Relationship Between Nature and Humankind
Mew wrote “The Trees are Down” in reaction to workers cutting down plane trees in London’s Euston Square Gardens during the early 1920s. The poem’s speaker provides an account of the trees’ destruction that both suggests that the natural world must be cherished and illustrates humankind’s failure to do so. In this way, the speaker implicitly argues that humankind’s destructive approach to nature is unjust because it fails to recognize the majesty of all living things.
The speaker presents the natural world as a living entity that is worthy of reverence. The poem opens and concludes with a quote from the Bible's Book of Revelation, which discusses the apocalypse. In the quote, an angel shouts, “Hurt not the earth, nor the sea, nor the trees” (Revelation 7:3). The speaker’s invocation of scripture implies that treating the earth with care is humankind’s godly duty. Throughout the poem, the speaker describes the trees in positive terms. They are first presented as “great plane-trees," and the speaker uses the adjective "great" again in line 18, praising both their stature and their virtue. The last tree standing is characterized as “green,” indicating that it is healthy and fertile, “and high,” emphasizing its stature and using religious imagery to subtly associate the tree with the heavens.
The speaker also humanizes the trees by describing them as “lonely” and “whispering” to evoke the reader’s empathy. The speaker’s own heart “has beat with these [trees],” creating a sense of kinship between the two. In fact, the speaker states that “even a rat should be alive” in spring to suggest that all living things are worthy of compassion. Thus, the language and references that the speaker uses to describe the trees elevate and dignify them, advocating their worthiness of respect and admiration.
At the same time, the speaker consistently calls out the cruelty with which “the men” cut down the trees. The speaker uses violent language to underscore the brutality with which people act. For example, the poem opens with the straightforward statement, “They are cutting,” before then providing brutal details, which include “the grate of the saw” and “the crash of the trunks.” Similarly, a tree trunk is described as “roped,” evoking bondage. The trees are also shown “dying,” explicitly charging the men with killing them, and doing so in a drawn-out way at that. Indeed, the speaker says that the men have “struck…the hearts of the planes.”
The speaker’s despair surrounding the death of the trees also broadens to a more general indictment of the irreversible damage humankind does to God’s earth. Line 17 reads, “It is not for a moment the Spring is unmade to-day,” meaning that the men have disturbed nature’s cycle not “for a moment” but instead in a significant, lasting way. In the Christian tradition, spring has long been a symbol of new life and spiritual renewal. Thus, the speaker suggests that the men defy God’s will by perpetuating death rather than celebrating revival.
Yet in the face of violent destruction, the men appear happy and unbothered, a juxtaposition that plays up their cruelty. The speaker hears “the loud common laughs of the men, above it all.” In this context, the descriptor “common” means vulgar or unrefined, but it also conveys that the men are desensitized and view their task as ordinary. The addition of “above it all” indicates that the men’s voices are louder than the sound of the trees falling and dying—yet another way in which they dominate nature. It also suggests that the men see themselves as more important than the trees, figuratively “above” them.
By placing images that cast the trees as lively and noble next to examples of the men’s cruelty throughout the poem, the speaker calls on the reader to recognize the injustice of the men’s—and of humankind’s—actions. In doing so, the speaker resists the normalization of humankind’s environmental destruction.
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The Ubiquity of Death
Descriptions of death and its impact pervade “The Trees are Down,” which can be interpreted as a reflection of the poem’s emphasis on the ubiquity of death. The speaker’s account of the trees’ drawn-out slaughter calls attention to the inevitability of death, as well as death’s widespread impact and the universality of the speaker’s painful experience. As such, the speaker’s narration displays death’s ever-presence and inescapability, for both nature and humanity.
As the plane trees disappear one by one, the speaker recognizes the inevitability of their death. The speaker’s opening description of the trees’ demolition reads, “They are cutting” and goes on to use the phrase “For days,” implying a prolonged process. The speaker later says that “the week’s work here is as good as done.” This language indicates an awareness of each tree’s tragic outcome as they are cut down one by one, as well as an inability to prevent it. This reality is so painful that the speaker appears to look away, choosing to describe the sounds of the men and the falling trees rather than describe the action visually. The speaker does not need to bear direct witness to their demise, as the speaker is certain that each plane tree will fall. Thus, the speaker’s descriptions highlight the inevitability of the tree’s death.
The speaker also links discrete living things, using their connectedness to reveal the widespread impact of an individual death. For example, the speaker’s own heart has “beat with [the trees]” across many seasons. That same “heart has been struck with the heart of the planes,” demonstrating the profound pain that the speaker feels when the trees die. The speaker is even touched by the death of a rat, which “is a god-forsaken thing,” according to the speaker. The speaker claims that spring “was in [the trees] from root to stem,” indicating that the earth has nurtured the trees and lives within their every limb.
As the poem draws to a close, the speaker describes various natural forces that interact with the trees and will be impacted by their death: “quiet rain […] sparrows flying […] and the small creeping creatures in the earth where [the trees] were lying.” Finally, the speaker concludes with a reference to the biblical passage that opens the poem, in which an angel cries out demanding that the earth, the sea, and the trees go unharmed. Again, the speaker ties together all of the world’s elements, while also suggesting that death’s impact reaches as far as the heavens, rippling outward to affect so much more than just the being that has died.
The speaker’s experience of death is also universal because of the frequency with which living things encounter death, largely as a result of their connectedness. Even the last tree standing, described as “lonely,” shares the speaker’s grief, as it is aware of and disturbed by the death that surrounds it. A similar conclusion can be drawn from the description of various plants, creatures, and elements that bear witness to the trees’ death in the final stanza. The speaker’s recollection of a dead rat from “a long past Spring” also proves that death can be encountered at any time. Even those times associated with new life, during which it seems “that even a rat should be alive,” are no exception.
The speaker’s language when retelling the encounter with the dead rat is vague—“turning in at a gate, getting out of a cart.” In fact, the speaker’s language throughout the poem is highly generalized. Those who cut down the trees are referred to as “they” or “the men” and they engage in “loud common talk.” These nonspecific characterizations are consistent with any number of men the reader—or most creatures, for that matter—might have encountered. Furthermore, the trees’ appearance and locale are never detailed and the speaker’s own biography remains a mystery. Due to such broad language, the speaker’s descriptions of this traumatic experience become applicable to anyone and anything that has experienced the death of another.
The speaker’s narration of the plane trees’ death implies that every human and every living thing—including the reader—will in some way be witness to and touched by death. And yet, in the poem, the omnipresence of death does nothing to diminish the anguish it causes. Everything in the natural world is touched by death and the pain it brings, the poem insists, which is all the more reason to fight against untimely death, such as that of the rat and trees.
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “The Trees are Down”
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Lines 1-4
They are cutting down the great plane-trees at the end of the gardens.
For days there has been the grate of the saw, the swish of the branches as they fall,
The crash of the trunks, the rustle of trodden leaves,
With the ‘Whoops’ and the ‘Whoas,’ the loud common talk, the loud common laughs of the men, above it all."The Trees are Down" opens with a quote from the Book of Revelation, in which an unnamed figure calls out a command not to hurt the earth, sea, or trees. This passage's broader biblical context is explored in the Vocabulary & References section. But even without background information, the quote provides some insight into the coming poem's themes, namely humankind's destruction of nature and the connectedness of all living things.
The first line of the poem itself makes a very plain statement that an unidentified group of people is cutting down trees in a garden. In contrast to the remainder of the poem, line 1 does not contain an end rhyme. (Even the last word of line 3 rhymes with the poem's title and epigraph.) It also does not contain the caesurae that will come to define the poem's structure. As a result, the poem's opening statement comes across as direct and authoritative, functioning as a brief break from both scripture and verse to establish the speaker's credibility. It also contains three stressed syllables in a row, which fall on "the great plane trees," immediately establishing the poem's subject.
The speaker goes on to list all of the sounds that emanate from the demolition site. These lines heavily feature onomatopoeic language, including “grate,” “crash,” “swish,” and “rustle,” words whose sounds seems to imitate what they describe. The noises that these words imitate resound throughout the stanza due to assonance and consonance:
For days there has been the grate of the saw, the swish of the branches as they fall,
The crash of the trunks, the rustle of trodden leaves,Sibilant /s/, /z/, and /sh/ sounds clash with cacophonous /t/ and /k/ sounds here and elsewhere throughout the poem. The tension between hard and soft that they create mirrors the workers’ cruel interruption of nature’s beauty. Additionally, the homophone pair “grate” and “great” as well as the men’s “Whoops” and “Whoas” contribute to the chorus of discordant sounds.
The speaker uses ambiguous language such as “a garden” and “the men,” which reflects the commonness of the images that the speaker describes. Plus, the sounds listed above could originate from any number of worksites. Therefore, the dense, layered cluster of sounds adds a sense of dimension to the setting, while allowing the reader’s imagination and memory to fill in the gaps. Sound will continue to play a central role in characterizing the poem’s setting and establishing its mood.
The ongoing activity indicated by phrases like “for days” and “they are cutting” emphasizes the drawn-out nature of the demolition and hints at the trees’ ultimate fate. Repetition in the form of parallelism and anaphora stylistically reflects this idea of continuing action. The parallel sentence structure in lines 2-3 within “grate of the," "swish of the,” etc. creates a repeating metrical pattern. Each phrase features an iamb followed by an anapest (unstressed stressed | unstressed unstressed stressed):
For days | there has been | the grate | of the saw, | the swish | of the bran- | ches as | they fall
The crash | of the trunks, | the rus- | tle of trod- | den leaves,These repeating stress patterns build momentum and anticipation, driving the poem forward.
Meanwhile, caesurae distinguish each sound and instance of parallelism, while asyndeton strings them together so that they flow into one another without any conjunctions, creating an echoing chorus. The repetition in line 4 also amplifies the workers’ “loud common talk” and makes it more “common” via repetition, ensuring that the workers' presence is felt.
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Lines 5-8
I remember one evening of a long past Spring
Turning in at a gate, getting out of a cart, and finding a large dead rat in the mud of the drive.
I remember thinking: alive or dead, a rat was a god-forsaken thing,
But at least, in May, that even a rat should be alive. -
Lines 9-12
The week’s work here is as good as done. There is just one bough
On the roped bole, in the fine grey rain,
Green and high
And lonely against the sky. -
Lines 13-16
(Down now!—)
And but for that,
If an old dead rat
Did once, for a moment, unmake the Spring, I might never have thought of him again. -
Lines 17-20
It is not for a moment the Spring is unmade to-day;
These were great trees, it was in them from root to stem:
When the men with the ‘Whoops’ and the ‘Whoas’ have carted the whole of the whispering loveliness away
Half the Spring, for me, will have gone with them. -
Lines 21-24
It is going now, and my heart has been struck with the hearts of the planes;
Half my life it has beat with these, in the sun, in the rains,
In the March wind, the May breeze,
In the great gales that came over to them across the roofs from the great seas. -
Lines 25-29
There was only a quiet rain when they were dying;
They must have heard the sparrows flying,
And the small creeping creatures in the earth where they were lying—
But I, all day, I heard an angel crying:
‘Hurt not the trees.’
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“The Trees are Down” Symbols
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Spring
Spring is traditionally a symbol for life and rebirth. The poem employs that symbolism, while also adding its own sense of the cruelty of death.
Spring marks a shift from dormancy to growth and liveliness in the natural world. According to Christian thought, Jesus rose from the dead in spring, furthering its associations with rebirth and renewal. The speaker sets the poem in both a present-day and a past spring, referencing its months, weather patterns, and nurturing ability. However, the speaker presents a contrast between this vivacious perception of spring and the heart-wrenching loss of life that the speaker witnesses—first that of the rat and later that of the trees.
According to the speaker, such deaths defy, or "unmake," spring, throwing nature off of its habitual course. So although death might be one of life's most natural occurrences, its placement within a spring landscape causes the loss to feel unnatural and particularly disturbing. Thus, the speaker employs this widely known symbol for life and renewal to stress the cruelty of the trees' death, as well as the inescapability of death, no matter the season. Furthermore, by challenging the common perception that Spring always brings about new life, the speaker expands its symbolic meaning to include darker elements.
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The Rat
The rat in the poem symbolizes the injustice of untimely death. Although death may be inevitable, the speaker argues that even the lowliest creatures, such as rats, don't deserve to die cruelly.
In stanza 2, the speaker recounts a years-old memory of coming upon "a large dead rat" lying in a muddy road on a spring evening. The speaker remembers thinking that although rats are vile, they, like all creatures, ought to be alive during the spring months. As a result, the rat becomes a symbol of unjust, untimely death. The speaker’s description of it as “a god-forsaken thing” suggests that even the most dreadful and seemingly insignificant creatures should be allowed to live in the spring.
This sentiment is picked up again in lines 15-17, which state that the speaker would not have given the rat a second thought were it not for the trees’ death. The rat is a wretched, relatively small creature, while the trees are grand and beautiful. But the speaker learns from the loss of the trees that all creatures are deserving of a lively spring and should be mourned. Thus, the rat stands in for all living things who are taken for granted and whose death is disregarded.
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Weather
Weather acts as a complex and shifting symbol in the poem. In general, though, it can be said to represent the experiences of life that the speaker and the trees share.
References to weather appear frequently within the poem but are mostly concentrated in the final stanza, which lists all of the conditions that the speaker and the trees have lived through, side by side:
[...] in the sun, in the rains,
In the March wind, the May breeze,
In the great gales [...]The rapid list of various weather patterns evokes a sense of passing time and suggests that the speaker and the trees have endured (or "weathered") many life events together. Thus, they come to represent the longstanding shared experiences between the speaker and the trees. The escalation of air currents from wind to a breeze to gales can be interpreted as an intensification of the hardships that the speaker and the trees face before being confronted with the ultimate tragedy—the trees' demolition.
The speaker mentions rain twice more throughout the poem, and in each instance it serves as a gloomy backdrop for the trees' death, denoting loss and mourning. Line 10 mentions "fine grey rain," while the rain in line 25 is described as "quiet." This delicate language suggests that there is a subdued, darker side to the spring months that are typically associated with new life. Therefore, much like the wind discussed above, rain can be seen as a dreary emblem of the march towards the trees' death. So although its precise meaning shifts in different contexts, weather generally represents the difficult experiences shared by the trees and the speaker, and by extension, all living things.
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Hearts
Hearts traditionally symbolize emotion. The poem combines that symbolism with the sense that all living things have feelings. So, the hearts in the poem come to represent the interconnectedness of all things.
The final stanza states that the speaker's "heart has been struck with the hearts of the planes" and "has beat with" them. This graphic imagery indicates that the speaker feels the trees' physical pain as they are destroyed. The first, literal heart can also be interpreted as a stand-in for the speaker's emotions, creating continuity of both emotional and physical experience between the speaker and the trees.
In this way, the hearts represent the commonality amongst all beings. This symbolism enables a poignant description of pain because the concept of connectedness takes the form of a strong, vivid image that the reader can relate to.
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The Angel
The angel that the speaker references is a figure in the Book of Revelation, which discusses the apocalypse. In this story, the moral failings of humankind have brought on God's wrath, which will ultimately be unleashed and cause great damage to the planet. The angel calls out to four others, each of whom holds one of the heaven's four winds at a different corner of the earth. The angel asks that they not wreak havoc on the planet until a number of devout Christians have been saved.
Within the poem, the angel directly ties environmental preservation to religious duty. As a savior of the pious who did not bring about the planet's ruin, he can be seen as a symbol of Christian morality in general, and the religious duty to be kind to the earth in particular. But he also acts as a harbinger of inevitable environmental decay at the hands of humankind, despite the efforts of a minority of good actors.
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“The Trees are Down” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Anaphora
"The Trees are Down" contains three examples of anaphora, a form of repetition that generally adds structure to the poem and controls its pace. This device first appears in the poem's second sentence, which begins with a great deal of parallelism—"the grate of the ... the swish of the ... the crash of the ... the rustle of ..." Anaphora perpetuates the echoing effect, with "the loud common" appearing twice in close succession. The repetition of this phrase calls attention to its presence, making it "louder" or more prominent. Plus, the phrase becomes more "common" in that it appears more frequently, the anaphora reflecting the text's meaning.
Furthermore, this initial stanza's various forms of repetition, in conjunction with devices such as onomatopoeia, establish an important trend that will persist throughout the poem: sound is used as an essential tool for adding depth to the setting and creating moody atmospheres in which to frame the poem's events.
Anaphora appears again in lines 5-7, where "I remember" introduces a scene from the speaker's past in which the speaker stumbles upon a "large dead rat." Here, repetition distinguishes the episode from the present action that surrounds it by placing its events firmly in the past. The reader later learns that the speaker would have forgotten this incident were it not for the trees, so the increased emphasis on the speaker's remembrance becomes a testament to the great impact that the trees have on the speaker. In combination with the seven "-ing" endings scattered throughout these lines, anaphora also perpetuates the poem's repetitive but dynamic cadence.
Lines 22-24 describe the various environments through which the speaker and the trees have lived side-by-side, their hearts "beating" together. Each month and weather condition is introduced by "in the," which helps to build speed and momentum as the short clauses roll into one another, aided by asyndeton. The repeating phrase gives the impression that the seasons have been cycled through over and over again, giving longevity and credibility to the speaker's relationship with the trees. As a result of the strong bond that the anaphora implies, the intensity of the speaker's suffering becomes more evident.
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Assonance
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Asyndeton
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Caesura
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Consonance
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Onomatopoeia
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Parallelism
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Personification
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"The Trees are Down" Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Revelation
- Plane trees
- Grate
- Trodden
- Common
- Drive
- God-forsaken
- Bough
- Bole
- Unmake
- Gales
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The final book of the Bible's New Testament that deals with the apocalypse. The quoted text that bookends the poem is spoken by an angel who is calling out to four other angels who hold back heaven's four winds from the corners of the earth. God's wrath will be realized by imminent environmental catastrophes, but the angel tells the others not to wreak havoc on the earth until certain pious individuals have been labeled and saved. Much like the poem, this passage advocates for the preservation of the natural world, while also recognizing the inevitability of its destruction due to the failures of humankind.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “The Trees are Down”
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Form
"The Trees are Down" is best thought of as an elegy on behalf of the fallen plane-trees described. Like many of Mew's poems, however, it has an unorthodox structure characterized by stanzas and lines of dramatically different lengths. The poem begins with a brief epigraph taken from the Book of Revelation. The epigraph is followed by the following five stanzas with the following structures:
- Quatrain
- Quatrain
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Octave, which can be divided into:
- Quatrain
- Quatrain
- Quatrain
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9-line stanza, which can be divided into:
- Quatrain
- Cinquain
While this poem is not technically a series of four-line stanzas, the longer stanzas naturally break apart in the pattern laid out above, as a result of both rhythm and the content they describe.
Each stanza contains both compact and sprawling lines. In fact, many of the poem's lines are so long that they are unable to be printed as contiguous strings of text in traditional publishing formats. The organic feel to the variance in length from line to line and stanza to stanza mimics a tree's growth and showcases the individuality of each tree. The drawn-out lines at the poem's outset and conclusion resemble roots and branches, which taper to create a "trunk" at the center. The narrow pillar in stanza 3 visually stands alone, much like the last remaining tree that it describes. Following this line of thinking, the short epigraph that precedes the poem reads almost like a seed from which the verse has sprouted. As mentioned above, most publishing formats require the awkward curtailment of long lines. These unnatural divisions reflect the actions of the workers, who thoughtlessly chop down the trees, forcing nature to comply with society's shortsighted interests.
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Meter
"The Trees are Down" doesn't follow a consistent pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables, known as meter. Instead, the poem is written in free verse; it rides its own rhythms, building speed and slowing down to reflect the corresponding text's meaning and stress important ideas. Still, the poem's pace relies heavily on the anapest, a poetic foot consisting of two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed syllable. Line 6 is a straightforward example of this effect:
Turning in | at a gate, | getting out | of a cart, | and fin | ding a large | dead rat | in the mud | of the drive.
The overarching anapestic rhythm of the poem creates mounting speed, ultimately crashing into the phrase "large dead rat," which contains three stresses in a row. The drawn-out stress pattern causes the gruesome image to linger, while its break from the established meter draws the reader's attention. Furthermore, this line and others heavily feature repetition and lists, often in conjunction, which build momentum and contribute to the poem's rhythmic force.
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Rhyme Scheme
While this poem does not adhere to a conventional rhyme scheme, it contains an abundance of both internal and end rhyme. Each stanza follows its own pattern, though in general the stanzas begin with AB pattern and end on a B rhyme:
- Stanza 1: ABCB
- Stanza 2: ABAB
- Stanza 3: ABCCADDB
- Stanza 4: ABAB
- Stanza 5: AABBCCCCB
Although the last word of nearly every line rhymes with that of another, some groups of rhymes are far more noticeable than others, due to variations in line lengths and rhyme schemes.
For example, in stanza 3, "rain" and "again" are separated by a considerable amount of text, while the resemblance between "that" and "rat" is much more apparent due to their proximity to one another. Unsystematic internal rhymes—for example, "them" and "stem" in line 18 ("it was in them from root to stem") as well as the homophones "great" and "grate" in lines 1-2—create increased sonic interest.
The rhyme scheme's unpredictability serves several functions. First, it creates complex webs of rhyming words, which reflect the poem's message that every aspect of nature is linked—beings are quite literally living in harmony with one another. Second, identifying the patterns at play requires a close reading and therefore ensures the reader's attention. Third, the varied rhyme scheme prevents the poem from becoming too sing-song-y, which would disrupt its solemn, reverent mood. Instead, the rhymes create a subtle musicality.
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“The Trees are Down” Speaker
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This poem functions as an individual's unique account of an act that has been witnessed by many. Phrases such as "I remember thinking," "for me," and "my heart has been struck" emphasize the personal nature of the poem. But rather than revealing personal biographical details, the speaker focuses on the images and emotions that the trees' deaths bring about. As a result, the reader gains significant insight into the speaker's experience of the poem's events, evoking empathy.
The speaker describes the trees using terms such as "loveliness" and "great" to express reverence for the trees, while somber language such as "dying" and "lonely" shows the speaker's discomfort with their destruction. Furthermore, the last stanza brings to light the depth of the speaker's relationship with the trees, as their hearts have "beat" together over many years, through good times and bad.
The trees' death also changes the speaker, who now understands that all living things are valuable and deserving of a just and timely death. The speaker uses a memory of coming upon a dead rat, who once seemed insignificant, to explain this realization. Overall, by focusing on personal experience rather than biographical detail, the speaker calls for an empathetic, emotional understanding of the poem's events. Plus, because the sentiments described are divorced from an individual biography, they appear universally relevant, regardless of the reader's background.
Mew once lived near London's Euston Square Gardens, where plane trees were demolished in 1922 to make way for new construction. The speaker can be seen as an extension of the poet insofar as both witnessed the demolition of trees, which they found disturbing.
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“The Trees are Down” Setting
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This poem is set in a wooded garden during the rainy spring months. Apart from that, the speaker reveals very little information about the physical location and historical context of the poem's events. Furthermore, because the language is straightforward and many (if not most) people throughout history have seen trees fall, it seems as if the poem could have been written in any number of settings, across both time and place. In fact, it is the very commonness of the experience that the speaker describes that makes it so disturbing.
Which is not to say that the poem is devoid of sensory imagery. Indeed, the reader can hear the "grate," "swish," and "rustle" of the trees and see the "large dead rat" lying in the muddy road. But these details are highly generalized and draw on common experiences. The speaker is then able to cast these shared experiences in a particular light, both exalting and mourning the setting with phrases like "whispering loveliness," "the great gales," and "the hearts of the planes." Thus, the nonspecific setting allows the reader to identify with the poem's speaker and events, provoking the reconsideration of a universal experience from a new perspective.
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Literary and Historical Context of “The Trees are Down”
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Literary Context
“The Trees are Down” is not the only poem Mew wrote about the demolition of plane trees in Euston Square Gardens. “Domus Caedet Arborem” also mentions this incident and uses similar language. Similar natural themes and ideas pervade many of Mew’s other poems, such as “May 1915” and “I so liked Spring.”
Mew’s breakout poem, “The Farmer’s Bride,” is a dramatic monologue told from the perspective of a farmer who reflects on his fraught relationship with his young wife, who resents their union. The poem was first published in 1912 to great critical acclaim, and it served as the title poem for the one full collection of poetry that Mew released during her lifetime. “The Trees are Down” appears in Mew’s 1928 posthumous collection of poetry, The Rambling Sailor, but The Farmer’s Bride of 1916 remains her best-known work. Aside from poetry, Mew also wrote and published stories and essays. Death, human cruelty, ambivalence towards religion, and environmental concerns are themes throughout much of her work.
Mew prioritizes straightforward language in all her writings, and uses natural, conversational rhythms in her poetry. Mew’s preference for everyday language and her careful contemplation of humankind’s relationship to its environment can be traced back to William Wordsworth (as in his poem, "Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802") and the Romantic poets. The structure and rhyme of Mew’s poems, however, is unconventional. The long, sprawling lines and natural imagery of “The Trees are Down” recall Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, which was first published in 1855.
The series of global cultural movements known as Modernism that gained momentum in the early 20th century burst open the door for experimental poetic structures. Thus, Mew can be seen as a poet who bridges the Victorian and the Modernist periods. Mew received praise from such literary figures as Edith Sitwell, Siegfried Sassoon ("Attack"), A.E. Housman ("To an Athlete Dying Young"), and Virginia Woolf (A Room of One's Own). But the admirer who most influenced Mew was Naturalist poet and novelist Thomas Hardy (The Mayor of Casterbridge), with whom she corresponded at length.
Historical Context
Mew once lived on the periphery of London’s Euston Square Gardens and was greatly disturbed when, in 1922, workers began demolishing plane trees at the south side of the gardens in preparation for new construction. “The Trees are Down” can be understood as a fairly straightforward reaction to their death.
However, the poem contains echoes of Mew’s broader experiences and preoccupations. Right around the time that the trees were demolished, Mew’s mother passed away. Her father had been deceased for over two decades and three of her brothers had died in childhood, while two other siblings were committed to psychiatric asylums. Mew took her own life in 1928, shortly after this poem was written. She was distraught and paranoid following the death of her sister Anne, her sole remaining sibling, with whom she was very close. This poem reflects Mew’s lifelong struggle to cope with such losses, as well as her profound awareness of death’s inescapability, which is a common theme throughout her poetic work.
Furthermore, Mew’s circle of friends contained many natural scientists, including pioneers of the emerging field of ecology. The Second Industrial Revolution, which took place about 1871 to 1914, saw an explosion in steel production, manufacturing, and railways, causing air and water pollution. Ever-expanding urbanization meant increasingly dirty and crowded cities and a changing landscape in the countryside. Mew was greatly influenced by her scientist friends and often expressed environmental concerns in her writings. In fact, she published a manifesto of sorts in the form of her 1913 “Men and Trees” essays, which argue for trees’ centrality to human life and criticized their demolition, especially in urban spaces.
Mew can also be seen as an example of The New Woman, a term used around the turn of the century to describe women who pushed against the restrictive gender roles of the Victorian Era. The quintessential New Woman was well-educated, independent, and career-minded. Indeed, Mew supported her mother financially, dressed in men’s suits, kept her hair closely cropped, and swore off marriage, citing her fear of passing on her family’s hereditary disposition to mental illness. However, there is evidence that Mew engaged in same-sex relationships, which spiked among New Women, as a result of increased freedom.
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More “The Trees are Down” Resources
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External Resources
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"Not For That City" in the Guardian — As short essay in the Guardian about one of Mew's sonnets.
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Poetry and the Environment — A short history of environmental poetry with links to poems, articles, videos, and other online resources, via Poetry Foundation.
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A Profile of Mew — An overview of Mew's life and works from the Poetry Foundation.
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Industrial Revolution — A succinct history of the First and Second Industrial Revolutions, which helps contextualize Mew's depiction of nature.
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The New Woman in the Victorian Fin de Siècle — An exploration of the emergence of the New Woman, including the figure's presence in literature, with images of primary source material from The British Library.
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LitCharts on Other Poems by Charlotte Mew
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