Antonio Machado’s ‘To a Dry Elm’: Analysis and Symbolism
Antonio Machado: ‘To a Dry Elm’ (A un olmo seco)
The Poem Text
At the old elm, cleft by lightning
and half-rotten,
with April showers and May sunshine,
few new leaves have emerged.
Elm Hill centenary,
licking the Duero! A yellowish moss
stains the white bark,
the trunk decayed and dusty.
It will not be singing the poplars which
guarding the path and shore,
inhabited by brown nightingales.
Army ants in a row
are climbing it, and deep inside
gray spiders wove their webs.
Rather than throw you, elm of the Duero,
the woodsman with an ax, and the carpenter
turn you into a bell-post,
carriage lance or wagon yoke:
before burning you tomorrow
as firewood in some miserable hut
by the roadside;
before a whirlwind uproots you,
and truncates the breath of the white mountains,
before the river pushes
valleys and ravines toward the sea,
elm, I write in my wallet
the grace of your greenish branch.
My heart hopes,
also, for light and for life,
another miracle of spring.
2. Metrics
The poem consists of 30 verses, alternating between eleven and seven syllables (hendecasyllables and heptasyllables). This model supports the possibility of a classical verse coming loose, as occurs in this poem. The consonant rhyme is absent in the twenty-fourth verse, which is a blank verse (no rhyme).
Rhyme is less restricted in verses 13 and 14, 15 and 16, and 21 and 22, where an embracing rhyme (rima abrazada) is produced. Enjambments occur between verses 5 and 6, 16 and 17, 24 and 25, and 28 and 29.
3. Plot Summary
Driven by his love for the land of Castile, the poet focuses on describing an elm, a tree species abundant in the region, situated on the banks of the Duero River. This description successfully creates a vivid landscape image in the reader’s mind. The poem transmits pity for the dying tree, which is old and destined for destruction, whether by bad weather or by man. However, it also introduces a glimmer of hope through the emergence of new leaves.
4. Central Theme
A sensitive and pathetic description of an old elm, which finds renewed life through spring.
5. Structure and Literary Devices
This poem is divided into three parts:
- Part I: Runs up to the fourteenth verse, providing an overview of the tree’s state, its location, and its environment. It cites the emergence of new leaves with the arrival of spring and compares the elm with other species, specifically the poplars.
- Part II: Occupies most of the rest of the poem (except the last three verses). The poet expresses his desire to leave a written record of the appearance of those wonderful leaves amid so much death and decay, mentioning all the potential fates awaiting the tree in its current state.
- Part III: The last three verses. Here, the focus shifts away from the elm itself, expressing a general desire for hope.
Machado also employs several literary figures, among which we highlight the following:
- The hyperbaton in verses 1–4.
- The ellipsis in the 5th verse, intensifying the expression by removing the grammatical element “is.”
- A syntactic parallelism in the fifth stanza, repeating the phrase “rather than.”
- An enumeration (list) of potential fates for the tree.
We also underline the semantic field (yellowish moss, rotten, dusty trunk, army ants, gray fabrics) referring to destruction and connoting disease.
Other resources used by the author, from a lexical-semantic standpoint, to enrich the poem’s plurality, transparency, and expressiveness include:
- Personification (“guarding”).
- Metonymy (“my heart hopes”).
- Metaphor (“turn you into a bell-post,” “carriage lance”).
- The apostrophe (verses 15 and 26).
The entire poem functions as an expressive symbol akin to metaphor and allegory, offering a range of imprecision and indeterminacy of interpretation.