Under the Tree — Key Ideas to Explore

A Child’s Sensory World

The poems consistently ground abstract concepts in physical experience. In “The Sky,” the speaker watches the sky shift and concludes, “I think it must be tied with chains / And something pulls it from the top.” The cornfield is seen from a “little crooked tree,” and the rows “come together like a fan.” Milking time is rendered through the cow’s “purple eyes” and the foam “piling very high” in a china mug. These details are not decorative; they form the poem’s entire argument. The child’s logic is literal: the sky moves because it is tied, the corn spreads like a fan because it does. The poems avoid adult metaphor, instead presenting a mind that processes the world through direct, physical analogy.

Family and Domestic Rituals

Several poems center on family members and household routines. “The Grandmother” shows a child watching her grandmother sew a quilt while telling stories “about in Mary-land,” a place associated with ships and a wide blue river. The poem “In Maryland” elaborates this memory, describing “Grandmother Barbara” watching ships from a hill. “The Sunday Bonnet” recounts a domestic mishap: a bonnet stored in a box becomes a nest for five kittens, discovered by Alice, “Evaline’s child.” These poems treat family history and daily life with the same observational clarity as the nature poems. The grandmother’s stories are not explained or moralized; they are simply reported as part of the child’s experience.

Moments of Unease and Wonder

Not all poems are serene. “In the Night” describes a child’s nightmare: a figure with “one eye shining red,” “two bent teeth,” and a “jaw was torn away.” The speaker cannot scream or move, and a panther appears with “streaks moving on his back.” The poem ends with the child waiting, face turned to the wall. This unsettling imagery contrasts with the volume’s lighter pieces. “The People” is a three-line poem: “The ants are walking under the ground, / And the pigeons are flying over the steeple, / And in between are the people.” It compresses a cosmic perspective into a child’s scale. These poems suggest that Roberts’ child speaker inhabits a world where fear and wonder coexist without adult mediation.

Readers approaching Under the Tree should expect a consistent, limited point of view: the child’s voice never wavers into adult commentary. The poems reward attention to small, precise details—the “little silk” the cow spills, the “sticktights” on a traveler’s clothes, the “five little cats” in a bonnet. The catalog subjects (American poetry, children’s poetry) are accurate but do not capture the work’s quiet strangeness. This edition preserves the original 1922 text, including the table of contents and acknowledgments, which list periodicals such as The Atlantic Monthly and Poetry where some poems first appeared.

I remember shelving Elizabeth Madox Roberts’ little Under the Tree, its child’s eye catching the cornfield’s tilt, and I thought of a worn volume beside it, The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume 3. The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century — Text and Context, whose verses keep a similar hush—home lights and heather, sung quietly, as if to a window at dusk.