prise.
For there in the heart of the spruce there is
rolled
The fabric for thousands of stories untold.
And on the white paper may later be spread
The fall of a nation, or fame of one dead
Who now strides abroad in his health and suc-
cess,
But will pass to the tomb when that log meets
the press.
There under the bark of that spruce there is
furled
A web that will carry the news of a world,
That clamors and crowds at the swaying red
backs
Of the toilers of Maine, the rough men of the
axe.
THE SONG OF THE WOODS’ DOG-WATCH
’Tis the weirdly witching hour of the woods’
“dog-watch,”
When the guide suspends the kettle in the ash
limb’s crotch,
Stirs the drowsy, drowsy embers till the cozy
fire beams
And flickers dance like gnomes and elves athwart
the glowing dreams
Of the sleeping town-bred fisher who is stretched
with placid soul
On the earth in sweeter slumber than his town
couch can cajole.
Ah, ’tis tough on bone and muscle, is this chas-
ing after fun--
And a sleeper gets to sleeping forty knots along
’bout one.
But the guide is up a-stirring--monstrous shape
with flaring torch,
Prodding up the dozing fire for the woods’ “dog-
watch.”
And the slow unclosing eyelids of the startled
dreamer see
This dreadful apparition thrown in shadows on a
tree.
And his heart for just a second goes to skirrup-
ing about
As it flopped when he was wrestling with that
five-three-quarter trout.
But the ogre leaves the shadows, leans against
a handy tree
And remarks: “The water’s bilin’; won’t ye
have a cup o’ tea?”
And he wakes to a night of the fisherman’s
June,
--Afar the weird lilt of the dolorous loon
Floats up from the heart of the fair, velvet
night--
A globule of sound winging slow in its flight.
As elfin a note as a gnome ever blew,
It wells from the waters, “Ah-loo-hoo-ah-hoo-
o-o-o.”
O spell of the forest! O glimmer and gleam
From the sheen of the lake and the mist-breath-
ing stream!
The night and the stars and the dolorous loon
Make mystic the spell of the fisherman’s June.
The spruces sing the lyric of the wood’s dog-
watch;
The kettle as it bubbles in the ash limb’s crotch,
The rustle of the spindles of the hemlock and
the pine,
The crackle where the licking tongues of ruddy
fire twine,
The oboe, in the distance, of the weird and lone-
some loon,
--This chorus sings the lyric of the blessed
month of June.
What June? Your June of meadows or your
June of scented breeze,
Or your June begirt with roses stretched in
hammock at her ease?
Such a deity for maidens! I can bow to no
such June!
I extol the mystic goddess of the Forest’s Silent
Noon.
--Noon of day or noon of night-time--in the
vast and silent deeps,
Where human care or human woe or human
envy sleeps,
Where rugged depths surround me, dim and
silent, deep and wide,
And no human shares my joy but that second
self, my guide.
--Here’s a June that one can worship. Here’s
a June by right a queen,
’Neath her hand eternal mountains, ’neath her
feet eternal green..
And here will I adore her, seeking out her
awful throne
With the Silence swimming round me, and
alone, thank God, alone!
[Illustration: 0161]
FIDDLER CURED THE CAMP
Wal, things they was deader’n old Billy-be-darn,
The boss was pernickity, cook wouldn’t yam;
For we’d heard ev’ry story old Beans had to spin,
And we hadn’t no longin’s to hear ’em agin;
Old Pitts, the head chopper, we’d pumped him
out, too,
--And he swow’d that he’d sung ev’ry song
that he knew.
As the rest wasn’t gifted, a sort of a damp
Old glister of silence fell over Peel’s camp.
The deacon-seat doldrums were blacker’n old Zip,
We’d set there an hour with never a yip,
’Cept the suckin’ o’ lips at the quackin’ T.D.’s,
With the oof and the woo of the lonesome pine
trees
Wistling over our smok’-hole. It grew on us,
too;
Our thoughts got as thick an’ as musty an’ blue
As the cloud o’ tobacker smoke, mixed with the
steams
From the woolens that dried on the stringers
and beams.
Old Attegat Peter said we was bewitched;
He said that he seed the Old Gal when she
twitched
A fistful o’ hair out the gray hosses’ tail
For a-makin’ witch tattin’. She’d hung on a nail
The queerisome web, so he said, an’ the holes
--They were fifty--they stood for the whole
of our souls.
An’ there we would swing, an’ hang there we
must,
Till the hoodoo was busted. Eternally cussed,
So he said, was the buffle-brained feller that
dared
To touch the witch-web that was holding us
snared.
Aw, we didn’t believe it--‘tain’t like that we
did!
But still we warn’t fussy! If we could get
rid
Of the dumps by a charm, we was ready to try,
And Peter said singin’ would knock ’em sky
high.
Wal, Peter said “singin’;” I can’t tell a lie,
’Twarn’t singin’, ’twarn’t nothin’--that mourn-
ful ki-yi!
That seemed like a beller in ev’ry man’s boot,
An’ ’twarn’t none surprisin’ the witch didn’t
scoot.
So there did we set in a stew an’ a cloud,
A grumpy old, lumpy old dob of a crowd.
But oh, landsy sake a-Peter, when the fiddle come
to camp,
W’y you wouldn’t know the place:
--Wuz a grin on ev’ry face
W’en we know’d the critter’d got it. An’ it
reely seemed the lamp
Had a ’leetric light attachment; an’ you
oughter heard us stamp
When that feller took his fiddle out an’ rosined
up the bow.
Then he yawked an’ yeaked an’ yawked
’Twistin’ keys ontil she squawked,
An’ we set there jest a-gawpin’; not a word to
say, but, oh,
We was right on pins an’ needles fer to have
him let ’er go.
Tweedle-weedle, yeaky, yawky, ’nother twist,
an’ pretty soon
He was waitin’ to begin,
With ’er underneath his chin;
He a-askin’, all a-grinnin’, “Wall, boys, name
it; what’s your tune?”
An’ we hollered all in concert, “Whoop ’er up
on ‘Old Zip Coon’!”
Oh, the deacon-seat had cushions an’ the bunks
were stuffed with down,
While the feller sawed the strings;
We could feel our sproutin’ wings,
An’ we wanted to go soarin’, go a-sailin’, wear a
crown,
Tear the ground up, whoop-ta-ra-ra, mix some
red and paint the town.
Oh, he played the “Lights o’ London” an’ he
played “The Devil’s Dream,”
--All the old ones--played ’em all;
Rode right on ’er--made ’er squall;
Didn’t stop to semi-quiver, tip-toe Nancy, pass
the cream;
No; he let ’er go Jerooshy, clear the track an’
lots o’ steam.
Thought I’d never heerd such playin’ sence the
Lord had giv’ me breath
An’ that P. I.--seems as if
He could put the bang an’ biff
In the chitter of a cat-gut like to touch the very
peth
In yer marrow; like to raise yer from the very
jaws of death.
So, oh, landsy sake a-Peter, when that fiddle
come our way,
Say, you wouldn’t know the place,
--Wus a grin on ev’ry face.
--Went to workin’ like the blazes an’ our vittles
set--an’ say,
Guess the Hoodoo flew to thunder when the
Haw-Haw come to stay.
THE SONG OF THE SAW
The song is the shriek of the strong that are
slain,
--The monarchs that people the woodlands of
Maine;
--‘Tis the cry of a merciless war.
And it echoes by river, by lake, and by stream,
Wherever saws scream or the bright axes gleam,
--‘Tis keyed to the sibilant rush of the steam,
And the song is the song of the saw.
Come stand in the gloom of this clamorous
room,
Where giants groan past us a-drip from the
boom,
Borne here from the calm of the forest and hill,
--Aghast at the thunderous roar of the mill,
At rumble of pulley and grumble of shaft
And the tumult and din of the sawyer’s rude
craft.
Stand here in the ebb of the riotous blast,
As the saw’s mighty carriage goes thundering
past,
One man at the lever and one at the dog.
The slaughter is bloodless and senseless the
log,
Yet the anguish of death and the torment of
hell
Are quavering there in the long, awful yell,
That shrills above tumult of gearing and wheel
As the carriage rolls down and the timber meets
steel.
Scream! And a board is laid bare for a home.
Shriek! And a timber for mansion and dome,
For the walls of a palace, or toil’s homely use,
Is reft from the flanks of the prostrate King
Spruce.
And thus in the clamor of pulley and wheel,
In the plaint of the wood and the slash of the
steel,
Is wrought the undoing of Maine’s sturdy lords,
--The martyrs the woodlands yield up to our
swords.
The song is the knell of these strong that are
slain,
The monarchs that people the woodlands of
Maine.
And the Fury that whirls in the din of this
war,
With rioting teeth and insatiable maw, is the
saw!
And this is the song of the saw.
DOWN THE TRAIL WITH GUM PACKS
Ev’ry nugget clean and sound,
Red’s a jewel, smooth and round,
Worth a dollar’n ten a pound;
Here’s your gum, ye giddy girls,
Here’s your Maine spruce gum.
The chaps that went off with the Klondike
diggers
For gold--jest gold,
Have slumped in the snow, and they work like
niggers,
And they haven’t got rich, we’re told.
We’re snowshoeing down from the north of
Katahdin,
See here! Yum, yum!
Here’s a tole to tease Maud to come into the
garden
--These rich, rosy lumps o’ spruce gum.
Our fires are dowsed in the lonesome old camps,
We’ve left them to wolves and the foxes and
damps.
The trail of our snowshoes lies snakin’ behind,
For we’re clawing for home with the treasures
we’ve mined.
We’ve no sort of use for the pick and the sluice;
Our Klondike has been the straight trunks of
the spruce.
Let them that elect grub the dirt for a “gleam,”
Our ore is the gum and our lode is the seam
That doesn’t go sneaking in mire and clay,
But grins at the sun and drinks deep of broad day.
Go grope for your gold in the bowels of mud!
We’ll cleave our fresh nuggets of resinous blood
Forced out from the heart through the fibre and
vein
Of the giants who lurk in the woodlands of
Maine.
Just squint through this bubble and gaze at the
blaze:
That red is the fire of hot summer days;
That glimmer is autumn; that glow is the tint
That was lent by some campfire’s guttering glint.
And here is a globe like the eye of a cat,
And this one is amber like honey; and that
Is a tear rosy red with the anger and shame
Of a king glooming down as the axe-heavers
came;
--Staring down as around him his kin roared
to earth
Midst the oaths of the swampers and Labor’s
rude mirth.
That tear of the spruce, may it go to the pearls
Flashing bright ’neath the lips of some sweetest
of girls!
These, then, are the treasures we bring in our
packs,
--Each round, rosy globule as sweet as the
smacks
We’ll get from the kids when they swoop with
a roar
At dad just the second he opens the door.
Clear out your old scraps, Mr. Druggist: we
come
With a good hefty jag of the season’s new gum.
Ey’ry nugget clear and sound,
Red’s a jewel, smooth and round,
Worth a dollar’n ten a pound.
Here’s your gum, ye giddy girls,
Here’s your Maine spruce gum.
REAR O’ THE DRIVE
The rain has raised the river an’ she’s np to
driving pitch,
An’ it’s oh, an’ grab your peavies an’ go sloppin’
in the wet.
We’ve got ter send ’er whoopin’ now without a
ketch or hitch,
But it won’t be kid-glove bus’ness, oh, my
hearties, you can bet.
Empty the water out of your boots
And gaffle your peavies, you P.I. galoots.
There’s the rips at Rundy’s Corner, and the
sluice at Puzzle Gorge;
You can drive ’em and connive ’em, but the
timber’s bound to lodge.
An’ sticks will buck--with best of luck--as
offish-like as hogs,
For there ain’t no calkerlatin’ how you’ll run a
drive o’ logs.
Chase the heathen with a sword,
Run the cattle with a goad,
All we want’s our Oldtown peavies, when our
drives go overboard.
An’ we’ll foller, sloshin’ in,
Yes, we’ll waller to the chin,
An’ we’ll herd ’em through the wildest stream
that ever frothed and roared.
So, look alive,
It’s after five,
An’ the drouth is a-chasin’ the rear o’ the drive.
Foller down, foller down with your peavies on
your backs,
For the herd that runs ahead of us goes loafin’
’less it’s chased.
They know they’re off to market, an’ they dread
the saw an’ axe,
An’ you’ve got to go and welt ’em, though the
water’s to your waist,
For they balk on Depsconneagon when a sixty-
footer halts;
Ev’ry eddy stands a-ready for to swing ’em in a
waltz.
An’ ev’ry rock is chock-a-block with jack-strawed
pine an’ spruce,
Ontil you’ve got the devil’s job to try and turn
’em loose.
But our goadstick is the peavy, an’ our cant-dog
is the pup
That’ll worry ’em an’ hurry ’em an’ rush ’em,
chase ’em up.
Oh, the drouth is right behind us, but we’ve
passed the North Twin flume,
An’ we’ll beat the sun in heaven in the race for
Pea Cove boom.
MATIN SONG OF PETE LONG’S COOK
It’s dark in the camp, and the woods outside
Are dark, dark, too!
And a hundred men still open wide
Their loud bay-zoo.
It’s sort of mean to rout ’em jus’
To work once more;
I’d like to let each tired cuss
Jus’ lay and snore.
But I’ve been up for an hour or two
And grub’s all on;
And now as the cook of Pete Long’s crew
I toot my horn.
The weirdest of all wood-sounds, by the way,
Is a cook’s queer cadence at break of day:
Whoo-e-e-e!
Git UP!
The grub is on the table, boys, the coffee’s on
the bile:
The swagon’s hotter’n Tophet and I swear ’twill
make you smile.
There’s whiskers on the gingerbread, the biskit
can’t be beat;
I’ve got molasses sinkers made from mother’s
old receipt.
--Oh, I’ve got molasses sinkers built around
some extra holes;
They’ll make you think of home and friends and
tickle up your souls.
The beans come out a-roarin’ when I boosted
up the lid;
They chuckled when I pried ’em out--they
laughed, I swear they did.
Don’t jolly me about your smells of Araby the
blest,
--Jus’ take a snuff of ground-baked beans all
hot from out their nest.
The grub is on the table, boys, hurroop, hurroop,
whoo-e-e-e!
Come, tumble out, git on a move! Good Lord,
it’s after three!
Rise up and shine, my gentle lambs, surround
your breakfast quick,
Or else you’ll git the sun’s ha-ha from over
Tumble Dick.
And if the timer heaves a growl and docks you
in his book,
Jus’ blame your own durn lazy luck--don’t
lay it on the cook.
For ev’ry man who’s et my cream-of-tartar bis-
kit knows
The cook of this ’ere camp, by smut, ’s the
earliest bird that crows.
For I’m old enough to spell a-a-a-ble!
The grub is all on the ta-a-a-ble!
Whoo-e-e-e!
Git UP!
OFF FOR THE LUMBER WOODS
The duffle is packed, and the babies are smacked,
and the wife has a buss and a hug;
And she’s done it up brown in a-loading me
down with about all the grub I can lug,
So long! Good-by!
I’m off! Don’t cry!
--Just about a month of Sundays and you’ll
see my homely mug.
Now look ye, ye towzled-haired son of a gun,
Be good to your mother or you’ll see some
fun
When your daddy comes down on the drive in
the spring
And fetches a withe with a hornetty sting.
Ha! ha! you young rascal, you’d rather have
gum?
Well, be a good baby and pa’ll fetch you some.
Yes, mother, you’re right, it does seem kinder
wrong
To leave you alone here the whole winter
long.
And it’s tough that I have to pack dunnage and
break
For the big timber wrassle at Chamberlain lake.
But folks are a-waiting for lumber and boards,
They’ve picked up their saws, now they’ve laid
down their swords.
They’re wanting the timbers for new city domes,
They’re wanting the shingles for humble new
homes.
The hammers are waiting, the nails are on end,
And the chorus of clatter’ll commence when we
send
A billion of lumber down race-way and sluice,
From the lonesome dominions of gloomy King
Spruce.
The men who print papers are wanting fresh
sheets,
The folks who build ships will be launching new
fleets,
For, mark me, no matter what Uncle Sam
planned,
He finds he can’t reach his new back lots by
land.
Don’t smile at me, wife, but I feel when I swing
That sweaty old axe from the fall to the spring,
That I hear one grim cry swimming up on the air
Through the dim, silent forest,--a pleading
prayer.
The clank of the press, and the scream of the
saws.
The grunt of the grinder that slavers and chaws
At the fibre of pulp wood; the purr of the plane
Are blent in one chorus, attuned to one strain,
--That sighs in the breezes or throbs in the roar
Of the tempest; and ever the cry is for “More.’’
And we men with our axes and horn-covered
palms
Hear the call as a man hears the summons “To
arms,”
And forward we plunge with no quarter, no
truce,
With axes a-gleam in the realms of King Spruce.
The duffle is packed, and the babies are smacked;
now wife, for a buss and a hug.
Save a smile ’gainst the spring, for I’m going to
bring just all the spruce gum I can lug.
I’m off! Good-bye!
So long! Don’t cry!
In about a month of Sundays you will see my
homely mug.
HERE’S TO THE STOUT ASH POLE
Hooray for to-day, and hooray for to-night, and
forget all the rest of it, boys.
Hold on, Mister Barkeeper, close up your jaw,
we’re paying for all of this noise.
We won’t mosey out, and we won’t set down,
and you can’t keep a one of us still;
You can charge, if you want to, so much for a
yawp; we’ll settle all right in the bill.
For this is our very last evenin’ on earth; the
last night we’ll be here alive.
To-morrow at six we all cut sticks for the rear of
the West Branch drive.
Hooray!
For Seboomook, and rear of the drive.
Oh, bartender, say, can’t you hustle them up?
Come, push out your reddest of paint,
We’re here for to splatter the carnation on, now
blow us for fools if we ain’t!
So set out your varnish for coffins, my boy,--
that brand called the “Grave-diggers’ Boast.”
I’ve got enough chink--now down with your
drink! and I’ll give ye a riverman’s toast.
While you’re raising up your glasses,
Jest forget the giddy lasses
That have coaxed away your dollars, and have
given you the laugh.
Turn away from them connivers,
And as honest, hearty drivers
Drink a good, round jorum to the stout ash staff.
When the girls have filched your cash,
There is still the hearty ash,
It is waiting at Seboomook for to cheer your
foolish soul.
Ah, you know we love it most; and I give
you this, my toast,
The river driver’s darling, oh, his long ash pole.
We’ve ridden the gorges on rioting logs, and
we’ve always swept safe to the land.
So long as we rode with the spikes in our boots,
and the long, limber pole in our hand;
We’ve pried at the jams on the brink of the
dams, and the pole has stood by like a man,
And then in the dash for our lives in the crash
the pole braced us up as we ran,
Hooray!
As we yelled through the smother and ran.
And when in the bellow of up-ending logs it
looked like good-by to our souls
We rode back to life from out of the strife,
vaulting high on the end of our poles.
Ah, these are the friends that stand by you, my
boys: they’re truer than all of the host
Of the fair-spoken gang of the thieves of the
town! Crowd up here and drink to my toast!
The girls were sweeter’n honey
Till they gathered in our money,
And the barkeeps they were pleasant just as
long as we could spend.
Now it’s quite another story,
--Case of throwdown! But, by glory,
We can drink this final jorum to our stout old
friend.
Though the gang has swiped our cash, there is
still the hearty ash,
He is waiting at Seboomook for to cheer your
foolish soul.
After all, we love him most! and he’s still the
last, loud toast
--The driver’s honest helper, oh, the long ash
pole.
MISTER WHAT’S-HIS-NAME OF SEBOOMOOK
Have you ever heard Seboomook with her April
dander up,
With the amber rushing river gorged to high-
est drivin’ pitch?
Have you heard her boom and bellow--rocky
lips a-froth with yellow--
When she spews and spumes the torrents--
oh, the wild and wicked witch?
She has menace in her breath,
And she roars the chant of death,
For the victim that she slavers never sees
the sun again.
And she clutches at the river,
With entreaty that it give her
The morsels for her longing, which are men--
men--men!
Here’s a tale to suit the cynic--’tis a satire from
the woods,
And concerns a certain hero who was hunt-
ing after Fame;
’Tis the grim and truthful story of a mighty
reach for glory,
But, alas, he didn’t get it, for we’ve clean
forgot his name!
He was one of Murphy’s crew,
And he swore that he’d go through
Where no other West Branch driver ever saved
the shirt he wore:
For he vowed he’d shoot the gorge
And allowed that he could dodge
The Death that knelt a-clutching at the prey
the waters bore.
When they said he couldn’t do it, why, he
laughed the crowd to scorn,
--Poled across the dimpling shallows with
a fierce and hoarse good-by
--He was Murphy’s top-notch driver, half a bird
and one-half diver,
But the best who brave Seboomook only
sound the depths to die.
And they found him miles below;
But his mother would not know
The mangled mass Seboomook belched from out
her vap’rous throat.
The first man coming down
Brought the story out to town,
Referring to the hero as a “dretful reckless
goat.”
Then he told the brisk reporters all the grim and
grisly tale,
And the deed was dressed in language in a
way to bring some fame.
But alas for human glory, the galoot who brought
the story,
Remembered all the details, but forgot the
fellow’s name.
Have you ever heard Seboomook roaring at you
in the night,
With her champing jaws a-frothing in a word-
less howl of hate?
’Tis a fierce vociferation to compel our admira-
tion,
For the chap who struck that rugged blow,
cross-countered thus by Fate.
When he lunged his pole at Death,
When the river sucked his breath,
Seboomook gravely listened when he screamed
his humble name;
For the honor of a foe
She would have the people know,
But she vainly dins her message in the deafened
ear of Fame.
HA’NTS OF THE KINGDOM OF SPRUCE
The sheeted ghosts of moated grange
And misty wraiths are passing strange;
The gibbering spooks and elfin freaks
And cackling witches’ maudlin squeaks--
--They have terrified the nations, and have laid
the bravest low,
But intimidate a woodsman up in Maine? Why,
bless you, no!
Merely misty apparitions or some sad ancestral
spook
Serve to terrify a maiden or to warn a death-
marked duke.
But the P. I. scoffs their terrors, though he’ll
never venture loose
’Mongst the ha’nts that roam the woodlands in
the weird domains of Spruce.
--He’ll mock the fears of mystic and he’ll scorn
the bookish tales
Of the fearsome apparitions of the past, but
courage fails
In the night when he awakens, all a-shiver in
his bunk,
And with ear against the logging hears the
steady, muffled thunk
Of the hairy fists of monsters, beating there in
grisly play,
--Horrid things that stroll o’ night-times, never,
never seen by day,
For he knows that though the spectres of the
storied past are vain,
There is true and ghostly ravage in the forest
depths of Maine.
For even in these days P. I.’s shake
At the great Swamp Swogon of Brassua Lake.
When it blitters and glabbers the long night
through,
And shrieks for the souls of the shivering crew.
And all of us know of the witherlick
That prowls by the shore of the Cup-sup-tic.
Of the Side Hill Ranger whose eyeballs gleam
When the moon hangs gibbous over Abol
stream;
--Of the Dolorous Demon that moans and calls
Through the mists of Abol-negassis falls.
And many a woodsman has felt his bunk
Tossed by the Phantom of Sourdna-hunk.
There’s the Giant Spook who ha’nted Lane’s
Old wangan camp and rended chains
--Great iron links of the snubbing cable--
As though they were straw--who was even
able
To twist the links in a mighty mat
With which he bent the forest flat
From Nahma-kanta to Depsiconneag
--Acres and acres--league after league;
Striding abroad from peak to dale
And laying on with his mighty flail.
Oh, fie for the shade of the manored hall,
A fig for a Thing in a grave-creased pall,
--For wraiths that flitter and flutter and sigh,
With flabby limbs and the sunken eye!
The woodsman recks not ye, frail ghosts,
But he knows and he bows to the deep wood’s
hosts,
Who sound their coming with giant breath,
Who mark their passing with storm and death,
Who shriek through blow-downs and howl o ’er
lakes,
--And he hides and trembles, he shivers and
shakes
When he hears the Desperate Demons loose
In the weird dominions of grim King Spruce.
THE HERO OF THE COONSKIN CAP
When the blaze leaps forth from the camp’s
great hearth,
And the fitful shadows come and go;
When the ruddy beam lights the deacon-seat
And the silent faces in a row;
As the storm-gust drags at the sighing eaves
And moans at the shuddering window-pane,
Some droning voice from a shadowy bank
Intones a song to the wind’s long strain,
And like the soughing, ebbing blast
The gusty chorus bursts and swells;
And then one single, sighing voice
Drones plaintively the tale it tells.
They’re simple songs, they’re homely songs,
And yet they cling in heart and brain,----
Those songs of the darkling forest depths,
These songs of the lumber woods of Maine.
There’s the song of home and the song of love,
And the lilt of battle, bold and free;
There’s the song of the axe in the ringing wood,
And the sighing song of the distant sea.