"I may love him, I may love him; for he is a man, and I am only a beech-tree. - Phantastes
You wonder why I stand and listen
To the wind through moonlit trees?
It is like the voice of one I loved,
Though it is never she.
We met but once in a fae night wood
With danger near at hand.
A tree so like a woman,
She came to be loved by a man.
Mournful and sweet my beech-tree spoke
Of her thoughts of love for me.
Not pleading or uncertain,
Just glad that her love might be.
She told me sometimes on rainy nights
She wished for a woman's form
And dreamed that in some wonder time
She'd be as such reborn.
My beech-tree told me this and more
Of her own heart-held lore.
Perhaps all things possess their own
And man's a partial store.
Though it was night, as she sang, I felt
The joy of sunlit fields
And for my few hours beside her,
All my life seemed healed.
She made me a gift of her tresses.
(I erred and have dearly paid!)
What I had hoped to treasure forever,
I lost to the Alder maid.
How could I? But I left her.
I kissed her and droplets fell.
With undemanding sadness
She trembled and said farewell.
Sometimes I wander in rain soaked woods.
Has she gained the tree-lore's prize?
And sometimes search a human crowd
For her clear and mournful eyes.