The Lonely Tree

How often do we stand and look in amazement at a tree, standing entirely alone on a remote hill-side, and wonder at it being there? The Tynedale poet Wilfrid Wilson Gibson was moved sufficiently by such a sight to write:

A twisted ash, a ragged fir,
A silver birch with leaves astir.

Men talk of forests broad and deep,
Where summer-long the shadows sleep.

Though I love forests deep and wide,
The lone tree on the bare hill-side,

The brave, wind-beaten, lonely tree,
Is rooted in the heart of me.

A twisted ash, a ragged fir,
A silver birch with leaves astir.


W. W. Gibson's poem The Lonely Tree is included in a collection of his work entitled Homecoming, published by the Wagtail Press in 2003 to celebrate the 125th anniversary of his birth in Hexham. It is included here with the publisher's permission.