WHEN THE ALLEGASH DRIVE GOES THROUGH
We’re spurred with the spikes in our soles;
There is water a-swash in our boots;
Our hands are hard-calloused by peavies and
poles,
And we’re drenched with the spume of the
chutes.
We gather our herds at the head
Where the axes have toppled them loose,
And down from the hills where the rivers are
fed
We harry the hemlock and spruce.
We hurroop them with the peavies from their
sullen beds of snow;
With the pickpole for a goadstick, down the
brimming streams we go;
They are hitching, they are halting, and they
lurk and hide and dodge,
They sneak for skulking eddies, they bunt the
bank and lodge.
And we almost can imagine that they hear the
yell of saws
And the grunting of the grinders of the paper-
mills because
They loiter in the shallows and they cob-pile at
the falls,
And they buck like ugly cattle where the broad
deadwater crawls.
But we wallow in and welt ’em with the water
to our waist,
For the driving pitch is dropping and the
Drouth is gasping “Haste!”
Here a dam and there a jam, that is grabbed
by grinning rocks,
Gnawed by the teeth of the ravening ledge that
slavers at our flocks;
Twenty a month for daring Death; for fighting
from dawn to dark—
Twenty and grub and a place to sleep in God’s
great public park;
We roofless go, with the cook’s bateau to fol-
low our hungry crew—
A billion of spruce and hell turned loose when
the Allegash drive goes through.
My lad with the spurs at his heel
Has a cattle-ranch bronco to bust;
A thousand of Texans to wheedle and wheel
To market through smother and dust.
But I with the peavy and pole
Am driving the herds of the pine,
Grant to my brother what suits his soul,
But no bellowing brutes in mine.
He would wince to wade and wallow—and I
hate a horse or steer!
But we stand the kings of herders—he for
There and I for Here.
Though he rides with Death behind him when
he rounds the wild stampede,
I will chop the jamming king-log and I’ll match
him, deed for deed.
And for me the greenwood savor and the lash
across my face
Of the spitting spume that belches from the
back-wash of the race;
The glory of the tumult where the tumbling
torrent rolls
With a half a hundred drivers riding through
with lunging poles.
Here’s huzza for reckless chances! Here’s
hurrah for those who ride
Through the jaws of boiling sluices, yeasty
white from side to side!
Our brawny fists are calloused and we’re mostly
holes and hair,
But if grit were golden bullion we’d have coin
to spend, and spare!
Here some rips and there the lips of a whirl-
pool’s bellowing mouth,
Death we clinch and Time we fight, for be-
hind us gasps the Drouth.
Twenty a month, bateau for a home, and only
a peep at town,
For our money is gone in a brace of nights
after the drive is down;
But with peavies and poles and care-free souls
our ragged and roofless crew
Swarms gayly along with whoop and song
when the Allegash drive does through.