And another thing | 29 November 2008

There are all kinds of reasons for objecting to Percy Bysshe Shelley. Selfish and often indifferent to the feelings of others (especially young women), while hypersensitive to his own, he was one of those intellectual monsters who think ideas matter more than people. But he was a great poet nonetheless. His ‘Ode to the West Wind’ is one of my favourite poems and I often think of it at this time of year when the trees are being stripped of their last leaves. ‘O wild West Wind,’ he writes,

Thou from whose unseen presence the leaves dead

Are driven like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,

Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,

Pestilence-stricken multitudes.

The tree is nature’s finest work of art, not on the topmost John Martin scale, of course, like the Grand Canyon, seen from above or, looking up, like a livid gash in the earth topped by blue sky, or the Himalayas of Kanchenjunga seen from Darjeeling — a colossal extended wedding-cake like Miss Havisham’s in its pristine form glittering in joy before decay set in. No: trees are not on that level, even the gigantic ones which loom on the pages of Thomas Pakenham’s magical book. But they are the right size to be our friends and allies and comforters. They are everywhere, hundreds of millions of them, varied to suit every mood, to give shade in summer, noble and sinister outlines in winter, freshness and promise of life in spring, and in autumn the special pyrotechnic display which God arranges every year to give delight and teach lessons of the transience of existence.

I call myself mighty fortunate to live in west London, where there are so many of these permanent works of art, and of such variety.