The Wood Giant

From Alton Bay to Sandwich Dome, From Mad to Saco river, For patriarchs of the primal wood We sought with vain endeavor.

And then we said: "The giants old Are lost beyond retrieval; This pygmy growth the axe has spared Is not the wood primeval.

"Look where we will o'er vale and hill, How idle are our searches For broad-girthed maples, wide-limbed oaks, Centennial pines and birches.

"Their tortured limbs the axe and saw Have changed to beams and trestles; They rest in walls, they float on seas, They rot in sunken vessels.

"This shorn and wasted mountain land Of underbrush and boulder,-- Who thinks to see its full-grown tree Must live a century older."

At last to us a woodland path, To open sunset leading, Revealed the Anakim of pines Our wildest wish exceeding.

Alone, the level sun before; Below, the lake's green islands; Beyond, in misty distance dim, The rugged Northern Highlands.

Dark Titan on his Sunset Hill Of time and change defiant How dwarfed the common woodland seemed, Before the old-time giant!

What marvel that, in simpler days Of the world's early childhood, Men crowned with garlands, gifts, and praise Such monarchs of the wild-wood?

That Tyrian maids with flower and song Danced through the hill grove's spaces, And hoary-bearded Druids found In woods their holy places?

With somewhat of that Pagan awe With Christian reverence blending, We saw our pine-tree's mighty arms Above our heads extending.

We heard his needles' mystic rune, Now rising, and now dying, As erst Dodona's priestess heard The oak leaves prophesying.

Was it the half-unconscious moan Of one apart and mateless, The weariness of unshared power, The loneliness of greatness?

O dawns and sunsets, lend to him Your beauty and your wonder! Blithe sparrow, sing thy summer song His solemn shadow under!

Play lightly on his slender keys, O wind of summer, waking For hills like these the sound of seas On far-off beaches breaking,

And let the eagle and the crow Find shelter in his branches, When winds shake down his winter snow In silver avalanches.

The brave are braver for their cheer, The strongest need assurance, The sigh of longing makes not less The lesson of endurance.

1885.

A DAY.

Talk not of sad November, when a day Of warm, glad sunshine fills the sky of noon, And a wind, borrowed from some morn of June, Stirs the brown grasses and the leafless spray.

On the unfrosted pool the pillared pines Lay their long shafts of shadow: the small rill, Singing a pleasant song of summer still, A line of silver, down the hill-slope shines.

Hushed the bird-voices and the hum of bees, In the thin grass the crickets pipe no more; But still the squirrel hoards his winter store, And drops his nut-shells from the shag-bark trees.

Softly the dark green hemlocks whisper: high Above, the spires of yellowing larches show, Where the woodpecker and home-loving crow And jay and nut-hatch winter's threat defy.

O gracious beauty, ever new and old! O sights and sounds of nature, doubly dear When the low sunshine warns the closing year Of snow-blown fields and waves of Arctic cold!

Close to my heart I fold each lovely thing The sweet day yields; and, not disconsolate, With the calm patience of the woods I wait For leaf and blossom when God gives us Spring!

29th, Eleventh Month, 1886.