Type of Work and Year of Publication

.......“Dirge in the Woods” is a fifteen-line lyric poem in which the poem's speaker presents his observations about a quiet woodland beneath windblown pines as the trees unceremoniously drop their cones and needle-shaped leaves onto the mossy ground.. Originally, it was part of a longer poem, “In the Woods,” published in an English journal, Fortnightly Review, in August 1870. Meredith later extracted several stanzas from “In the Woods” and turned them into three separate poems: “Dirge in the Woods,” “Whimper of Sympathy,” and “Woodland Peace.” “Dirge in the Woods” was then published in collections entitled Poems and Ballads of Tragic Life (1887) and A Reading of Earth (1888).

Themes

Inevitability of Death

.......In the nineteenth century, England and other countries were racing forward with the Industrial Revolution, bringing rapid economic and social growth and the promise of a better life. The poem says, however, that the might of all the machines and technologies in the world cannot overcome the inevitability of death. Time and nature continue to prune the human race—and do so with cold indifference, as line ? suggests.

Continuity

.......Although each living thing—a human, an animal, a plant, or a microorganism—eventually dies, the species to which it belongs continues to survive. In the poem, the fall of pine cones from the tree underscores this theme. Here is why: Pine trees produce female cones containing seeds and male cones containing pollen that fertilizes the seeds when wind carries the pollen from the male to the female cone. After a current of air carries a fertilized seed to earth, the seed blossoms into a new tree. Thus, although pine cones eventually fall to earth, their progeny sprout and grow—and life goes on.

1....A wind sways the pines,

2........And below

3....Not a breath of wild air;

4....Still as the mosses that glow¹

5....On the flooring and over the lines

6....Of the roots here and there.

7....The pine-tree drops its dead;²

8....They are quiet, as under the sea.

9....Overhead, overhead

10...Rushes life in a race,

11...As the clouds the clouds chase;

12........And we go,

13...And we drop like the fruits of the tree,

14........Even we,

15........Even so.

Footnotes

1...Glow: Glints of sunlight apparently reach the forest floor.
2...Dead: These include cones, needles, and twigs.