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,