woods,
Where the mounded drifts lie soft and deep in the noiseless solitudes,
The hut of the lonely woodcutter stands, a few rough beams that show
A blunted peak and a low black line, from the glittering waste of snow.
In the frost-still dawn from his roof goes up in the windless,
motionless air,
The thin, pink curl of leisurely smoke; through the forest white and
bare
The woodcutter follows his narrow trail, and the morning rings and
cracks
With the rhythmic jet of his sharp-blown breath and the echoing shout of
his axe.
Only the waft of the wind besides, or the stir of some hardy bird--
The call of the friendly chickadee, or the pat of the nuthatch--is
heard;
Or a rustle comes from a dusky clump, where the busy siskins feed,
And scatter the dimpled sheet of the snow with the shells of the
cedar-seed.
Day after day the woodcutter toils untiring with axe and wedge,
Till the jingling teams come up from the road that runs by the valley's
edge,
With plunging of horses, and hurling of snow, and many a shouted word,
And carry away the keen-scented fruit of his cutting, cord upon cord.
Not the sound of a living foot comes else, not a moving visitant there,
Save the delicate step of some halting doe, or the sniff of a prowling
bear.
And only the stars are above him at night, and the trees that creak and
groan,
And the frozen, hard-swept mountain-crests with their silent fronts of
stone,
As he watches the sinking glow of his fire and the wavering flames
upcaught,
Cleaning his rifle or mending his moccasins, sleepy and slow of
thought.
Or when the fierce snow comes, with the rising wind, from the grey
north-east,
He lies through the leaguering hours in his bunk like a winter-hidden
beast,
Or sits on the hard-packed earth, and smokes by his draught-blown
guttering fire,
Without thought or remembrance, hardly awake, and waits for the storm
to tire.
Scarcely he hears from the rock-rimmed heights to the wild ravines
below,
Near and far-off, the limitless wings of the tempest hurl and go
In roaring gusts that plunge through the cracking forest, and lull,
and lift,
All day without stint and all night long with the sweep of the hissing
drift.
But winter shall pass ere long with its hills of snow and its fettered
dreams,
And the forest shall glimmer with living gold, and chime with the
gushing of streams;
Millions of little points of plants shall prick through its matted
floor,
And the wind-flower lift and uncurl her silken buds by the woodman's
door;
The sparrow shall see and exult; but lo! as the spring draws gaily on,
The woodcutter's hut is empty and bare, and the master that made it is
gone.
He is gone where the gathering of valley men another labour yields,
To handle the plough, and the harrow, and scythe, in the heat of the
summer fields.
He is gone with his corded arms, and his ruddy face, and his moccasined
feet,
The animal man in his warmth and vigour, sound, and hard, and complete.
And all summer long, round the lonely hut, the black earth burgeons and
breeds,
Till the spaces are filled with the tall-plumed ferns and the triumphing
forest-weeds;
The thick wild raspberries hem its walls, and, stretching on either
hand,
The red-ribbed stems and the giant-leaves of the sovereign spikenard
stand.
So lonely and silent it is, so withered and warped with the sun and
snow,
You would think it the fruit of some dead man's toil a hundred years
ago;
And he who finds it suddenly there, as he wanders far and alone,
Is touched with a sweet and beautiful sense of something tender and
gone,
The sense of a struggling life in the waste, and the mark of a soul's
command,
The going and coming of vanished feet, the touch of a human hand.
AMOR VITÆ
I love the warm bare earth and all
That works and dreams thereon:
I love the seasons yet to fall:
I love the ages gone,
The valleys with the sheeted grain,
The river's smiling might,
The merry wind, the rustling rain,
The vastness of the night.
I love the morning's flame, the steep
Where down the vapour clings:
I love the clouds that float and sleep,
And every bird that sings.
I love the purple shower that pours
On far-off fields at even:
I love the pine-wood dusk whose floors
Are like the courts of heaven.
I love the heaven's azure span,
The grass beneath my feet:
I love the face of every man
Whose thought is swift and sweet.
I let the wrangling world go by,
And like an idle breath
Its echoes and its phantoms fly:
I care no jot for death.
Time like a Titan bright and strong
Spreads one enchanted gleam:
Each hour is but a fluted song,
And life a lofty dream.
WINTER-BREAK
All day between high-curded clouds the sun
Shone down like summer on the steaming planks.
The long, bright icicles in dwindling ranks
Dripped from the murmuring eaves till one by one
They fell. As if the spring had now begun,
The quilted snow, sun-softened to the core,
Loosened and shunted with a sudden roar
From downward roofs. Not even with day done
Had ceased the sound of waters, but all night
I heard it. In my dreams forgetfully bright
Methought I wandered in the April woods,
Where many a silver-piping sparrow was,
By gurgling brooks and spouting solitudes,
And stooped, and laughed, and plucked hepaticas.