The Ilex Tree is a collection of poems by Australian poets Les Murray and Geoffrey Lehmann, published by ANU Press in 1965.
[1] The collection contains 43 poems (25 by Murray and 18 by Lehmann) from a variety of sources, with some being published here for the first time.
[3] Reviewing the collection in The Bulletin poet Vivian Smith noted that the subjects of Murray's poems "range from the sawmill towns to the aboriginal settlement, to love and the seasons" and he "draws from his childhood", while Lehmann's come "from family history".
Smith concluded that Lehmann and Murray "belong to the small group of Australian poets under thirty whose development one will watch with the keenest interest.
"[4] Dennis Douglas, writing in The Age, commented that while there "are a number of uncertain poems in the volume" the level "of achievement in the very good ones is high enough to suggest that as poets Les Murray and Geoffrey Lehmann have gained a stage of maturity of which they can justly be proud.