The Orange Tree
"The Orange Tree" is a poem by Australian poet John Shaw Neilson. It was first published in The Bookfellow on 15 February 1921, and later in the poet's collections and other Australian poetry anthologies.
Outline
A young girl is in conversation with the narrator of the poem and discuss the light that is "not of the sky" that lies within the orange grove they see.Analysis
The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature states that the poem was "inspired by the beauty of the orange groves at Merbein near Mildura in the Murray River irrigration area". It goes on to note that the poem "has sometimes been interpreted as youth's innate understanding of the natural beauty of life".A writer in The Cambridge History of Australian Literature described the poem as "symbolism with its sleeves rolled up".
Further publications
An Australasian Anthology : Australian and New Zealand Poems edited by Percival Serle, R. H. Croll, and Frank Wilmot, Collins, 1927Collected Poems of John Shaw Neilson edited by R. H. Croll, Lothian, 1934An Anthology of Australian Verse edited by George Mackaness, Angus & Robertson, 1952The Boomerang Book of Australian Poetry edited by Enid Moodie Heddle, Longmans Green, 1956A Book of Australian Verse edited by Judith Wright, Oxford University Press, 1956New Land, New Language : An Anthology of Australian Verse edited by Judith Wright, Oxford University Press, 1957The Penguin Book of Australian Verse edited by John Thompson, Kenneth Slessor and R. G. Howarth, Penguin Books, 1958From the Ballads to Brennan edited by T. Inglis Moore, Angus & Robertson, 1964The Penguin Book of Australian Verse edited by Harry Heseltine, Penguin Books, 1972The Golden Apples of the Sun : Twentieth Century Australian Poetry edited by Chris Wallace-Crabb, Melbourne University Press, 1980The Collins Book of Australian Poetry edited by Rodney Hall, Collins, 1981The World's Contracted Thus edited by J. A. McKenzie and J. K. McKenzie, Heinemann Education, 1983The Illustrated Treasury of Australian Verse edited by Beatrice Davis, Nelson, 1984Cross-Country : A Book of Australian Verse edited by John Barnes and Brian MacFarlane, Heinemann, 1984My Country : Australian Poetry and Short Stories, Two Hundred Years edited by Leonie Kramer, Lansdowne, 1985The Macmillan Anthology of Australian Literature edited by Ken L. Goodwin and Alan Lawson, Macmillan, 1990The Faber Book of Modern Australian Verse edited by Vincent Buckley, Faber, 1991Selected Poems by John Shaw Neilson, Angus and Robertson, 1993The Illustrated Treasury of Australian Verse edited by Beatrice Davis, State Library of NSW Press, 1996Australian Verse : An Oxford Anthology edited by John Leonard, Oxford University Press, 1998Our Country : Classic Australian Poetry : From Colonial Ballads to Paterson & Lawson edited by Michael Cook, Little Hills Press, 2002Hell and After : Four Early English-language Poets of Australia edited by Les Murray, Carcanet 2005An Anthology of Australian Poetry to 1920 edited by John Kinsella, University of Western Australia Library, 2007100 Australian Poems You Need to Know edited by Jamie Grant, Hardie Grant, 2008The Penguin Anthology of Australian Poetry edited by John Kinsella, Penguin, 200960 Classic Australian Poems edited by Geoff Page, University of NSW Press, 2009Macquarie PEN Anthology of Australian Literature edited by Nicholas Jose, Kerryn Goldsworthy, Anita Heiss, David McCooey, Peter Minter, Nicole Moore, and Elizabeth Webby, Allen and Unwin, 2009The Puncher & Wattmann Anthology of Australian Poetry edited by John Leonard, Puncher & Wattmann, 2009Australian Poetry Since 1788 edited by Geoffrey Lehmann and Robert Gray, University of NSW Press, 2011Collected Verse of John Shaw Neilson by John Shaw Neilson, UWA Publishing, 2012The poem was also translated into Arabic in 1999.