I was taken in by the story in the poem “Tree-Burial” by William Cullen Bryant, a 19th century American romantic poet - about a Native American ritual of burying a child high among the trees rather than in the ground. This ritual and the words spoken seem a powerful balm in the face of grief and sadness. The text reflects the mother’s tenderness to the child - sorrowful but loving and beautiful. I found the poem in a collection of “Poems About Trees,” celebrating sacred groves, wild woodlands, and bountiful orchards, paying lyrical tribute to these majestic beings with whom we share the earth.
Composed for women’s voices, the flute and bassoon add a doleful fullness to this piece. My composition borrows from the longer poem.
Also available in SSA & piano, flute, oboe/clarinet and bassoon.
Performed here by the Rocky Mountain Chamber Choir - Virtual Singers.
Tree-Burial
INTRODUCTION - SPOKEN
Near our southwestern border, when a child
Dies in the cabin of a Native American wife,
She makes its funeral-couch of delicate furs,
Blankets and bark, and binds it to the bough
Of some broad branching tree with leathern thongs
And sinews of the deer. A mother once
Wrought at this tender task, and murmured thus:
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“Child of my love, I do not lay thee down
Among the chilly clods where never comes
The pleasant sunshine. There the greedy wolf
Might break into thy grave and tear thee thence,
And I should sorrow all my life. I make
Thy burial-place here, where the light of day
Shines round thee, and the airs that play among
The boughs shall rock thee. Here the morning sun,
Which woke thee once from sleep to smile on me,
Shall beam upon thy bed and sweetly here
Shall lie the red light of the evening clouds
Which called thee once to slumber. Here the stars
Shall look upon thee -
Here too the birds,
Whose music thou didst love, shall sing to thee,
And near thee build their nests and rear their young
With none to scare them.
And now, oh wind, that here among the leaves
Dost softly rustle, breathe thou ever thus
Gently,”