It Is Not Growing Like a Tree by Ben Jonson

Full Text

It is not growing like a tree
In bulk doth make Man better be;
Or standing long an oak, three hundred year,
To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sere:
A lily of a day
Is fairer far in May,
Although it fall and die that night—
It was the plant and flower of light.
In small proportions we just beauties see;
And in short measures life may perfect be.

Overview

This ten-line excerpt from Jonson's "A Pindaric Ode" to Sir Lucius Cary and Sir Henry Morison is one of the most compact arguments in English poetry. The claim is radical: a long life is not a good life. An oak standing three hundred years only to "fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sere" is worth less than a lily that blooms and dies in a single day. Quantity is not quality. Duration is not achievement. The poem's power comes from its structural enactment of its own argument. The first four lines are long and heavy — they describe bulk, endurance, three hundred years of standing. Then the verse suddenly shortens: "A lily of a day / Is fairer far in May." The short lines are the lily. Jonson doesn't just argue that brevity can be beautiful — he demonstrates it. The closing couplet generalizes the insight: "In small proportions we just beauties see; / And in short measures life may perfect be." "Just" means exact or true — small things reveal beauty more precisely than large ones.

Line-by-Line Analysis

Lines 1-4

"It is not growing like a tree / In bulk doth make Man better be" — the opening negation is important. Jonson starts by rejecting the obvious assumption. Bulk and growth do not make a person better. The oak example pushes this to its extreme: "standing long an oak, three hundred year" — three centuries of endurance — only to become a dead log, "dry, bald, and sere." The adjectives pile up like the oak's useless years. "Sere" means withered, and its sound echoes the dryness it describes.

Lines 5-8

The pivot. "A lily of a day / Is fairer far in May" — the lines shrink dramatically, mirroring the lily's smallness. "Fairer far" is emphatic — not slightly better, but greatly superior. "Although it fall and die that night" acknowledges the cost honestly. The lily's beauty is not despite its brevity but inseparable from it. "It was the plant and flower of light" — "flower of light" elevates the lily from botany to metaphysics. It was light itself, briefly given form.

Lines 9-10

The concluding couplet states the principle: "In small proportions we just beauties see" — "just" means true or exact. Small things reveal beauty more precisely. "And in short measures life may perfect be" — "measures" does triple duty: it means quantities (short lives), poetic meters (short lines), and musical measures (brief songs). The poem's own brevity proves its point — these ten lines are more memorable than most epics.

Themes

• Quality over quantity — brevity can be perfection
• The failure of mere endurance as a measure of worth
• Beauty as inseparable from transience
• Form enacting content — short lines for a short-life argument
• The oak and lily as competing models of a good life
• Artistic economy as moral virtue

Literary Devices

Contrast (Oak vs. Lily)

"standing long an oak, three hundred year" vs. "A lily of a day" — The poem is built on a single opposition: the long-lived oak that ends as a dead log versus the one-day lily that is "the plant and flower of light." Jonson stacks the deck — the oak gets ugly adjectives, the lily gets luminous ones.

Structural Mimicry

Lines 1-4 (long) vs. lines 5-6 (short) — The long opening lines about the oak physically embody bulk and duration. The short lines about the lily embody brevity and grace. The poem demonstrates its argument through its own form.

Metaphor

"the plant and flower of light" — The lily is not just a flower that happens to be beautiful — it is light itself given botanical form. This elevates the argument from preference to metaphysics: brevity doesn't just look better, it participates in something higher.

Polysemy

"in short measures life may perfect be" — "Measures" simultaneously means quantities, poetic meters, and musical bars. In all three senses, shortness enables perfection — in life, in verse, and in song.

Tricolon of Decay

"dry, bald, and sere" — Three adjectives in descending syllable count (dry, bald, sere) describe the oak's end. The progression strips away any remaining dignity — each word is more withered than the last.

Historical Context

This passage comes from Jonson's "To the Immortal Memory and Friendship of That Noble Pair, Sir Lucius Cary and Sir Henry Morison" (1640), written after Morison's early death at about age 20. The poem consoles Cary by arguing that Morison's short life was complete and perfect — better a brief life well-lived than a long one wasted. Jonson was experimenting with the Pindaric ode form, adapting its Greek triadic structure (strophe, antistrophe, epode) to English. This excerpt became the poem's most famous passage, often anthologized on its own.