Poems of Nature, Poems Subjective and Reminiscent and Religious Poems, Complete

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.