Trees, and Other Poems

About

Kilmer's brief collection is remembered almost entirely for its twelve-line title poem — 'I think that I shall never see / A poem lovely as a tree' — which became one of the most widely memorized poems in the American school curriculum. Kilmer was killed in the First World War at thirty-one, which gave the poem's plea for natural beauty over human art a retrospective pathos. The collection also contains religious verse and elegies that demonstrate a genuine lyric gift, if not a wide range.