There was a cherry tree afoam with flower
As I passed through a village one sweet hour.
A cherry tree in flower's a half-wild thing,
Gone back an aeon for its brief, mad spring.
Sometimes in fruit a cherry tree goes fay,
Steal from your bed and look, some break of day.
But by the side of this one folks had built
A smirking little place, picked out with gilt,
With paths of concrete and a steel-wire gate,
And curtain-smothered windows, bayed in state.
Oh, architect who built in that green wild,
Why were you not a fairy or a child?
Why made you not your walls of warm brown trees.
With rose-wreathed windows singing in the breeze?
Oh, master of that house, why not have planned
Of springing grass the paths on your fair land?
And hung a little wicket gate, made white,
For any child to swing on as its right?
I know what happened in the fruiting hour;
The cherries of that singing tree turned sour.
Ah, touched with faery should a dwelling be,
Companioned by a foaming cherry tree.
First published in The Sydney Morning Herald, 24 November 1934
