THE WOODS

DOUGLAS MALLOCH

THE
WOODS

BY
DOUGLAS MALLOCH
AUTHOR OF “IN FOREST LAND”

NEW YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

Copyright, 1913,
By GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

To
MY SON DOUGLAS
1902-1909

CONTENTS

THE WOODS

POSSESSION

There’s some of us has this world’s goods,

An’ some of us has none—

But all of us has got the woods,

An’ all has got the sun.

So, settin’ here upon the stoop,

This patch o’ pine beside,

I never care a single whoop—

Fer I am satisfied.

Now, take the pine on yonder hill:

It don’t belong to me;

The boss he owns the timber—still,

It’s there fer me to see.

An’, ’twixt the ownin’ of the same

An’ smellin’ of its smell,

I’ve got the best of that there game,

An’ so I’m feelin’ well.

The boss in town unrolls a map

An’ proudly says, “It’s mine.”

But he don’t drink no maple sap

An’ he don’t smell no pine.

The boss in town he figgers lands

In quarter-sections red;

Lord! I just set with folded hands

An’ breathe ’em in instead.

The boss his forest wealth kin read

In cent an’ dollar sign;

His name is written in the deed—

But all his land is mine.

There’s some of us has this world’s goods,

An’ some of us has none—

But all of us has got the woods,

An’ all has got the sun!

WHEN THE GEESE COME NORTH

Their faint “honk-honk” announces them,

The geese when they come flying north;

Above the far horizon’s hem

From out the south they issue forth.

They weave their figures in the sky,

They write their name upon its dome,

And, o’er and o’er, we hear them cry

Their cry of gladness and of home.

Now lakes shall loose their icy hold

Upon the banks, and crocus bloom;

The sun shall warm the river’s cold

And pierce the Winter’s armored gloom;

The vines upon the oaken tree

Shall shake their wavy tresses forth,

The grass shall wake, the rill go free—

For, see! The geese are flying north!

SPRING FEVER

Not exactly lazy—

Yet I want to sit

In the mornin’ hazy

An’ jest dream a bit.

Haven’t got ambition

Fer a single thing—

Regaler condition

Ev’ry bloomin’ Spring.

Want to sleep at noontime

(Ought to work instead),

But along at moontime

Hate to go to bed.

Find myself a-stealin’

Fer a sunny spot—

Jest that Springy feelin’,

That is what I’ve got.

Like to set a-wishin’

Fer a pipe an’ book,

Like to go a-fishin’

In a meadow-brook

With some fish deceiver,

Underneath a tree—

Jest the old Spring fever,

That’s what’s ailing me!

MARCH

In what a travail is our Springtime born!—

’Mid leaden skies and garmenture of gloom.

Wild waves of cloud the drifting stars consume

And shipless seas of heaven greet the morn.

The forest trees stand sad and tempest-torn,

Memorials of Summer’s ended bloom;

For unto March, the sister most forlorn,

No roses come her pathway to illume.

Yet ’tis the month the Winter northward flies

With one last trumpeting of savage might.

Now stirs the earth of green that underlies

This other earth enwrapped in garb of white.

And while poor March, grown weary, droops and dies

The little Springtime opens wide its eyes.

CHILDREN OF THE SPRING

What means the Spring to you?—

The tree, the bloom, the grass;

Wide fields to wander through;

A primrose path to pass;

Bright sun, and skies of blue;

The songs of singing streams;

The rippling riverside

Awakening from dreams;

Fair-browed and azure-eyed—

Oh, thus the Springtime seems.

Yet not for such as you

She comes with song and voice,

’Tis not for such as you

She makes the heart rejoice,

She comes with skies of blue.

Spring’s children are the ill—

’Tis these she comes to cheer;

Upon the window-sill,

Within the chamber drear,

She sits her song to trill.

On narrow cots they lie

Within the quiet room,

Their sky a square of sky

Cut from the inner gloom,

From dreary walls and high.

Spring means so much to these,

The prisoners abed!—

The perfume of the breeze,

The birdsong overhead,

The echoed melodies.

The window open wide—

Behold, the Spring is here!

No more the countryside

Is dim and dark and drear;

Now stronger runs the tide.

The pale and patient wife,

Her babe upon her breast,

Forgets the night, the knife,

And sleeps the sleep of rest,

Awakening to life.

The old, the very old,

Behold in budding Spring

Another year unfold—

And life, a tinsel thing,

Is turned again to gold.

And e’en the empty cot,

Whose Spring has come too late,

The one who now is not,

The one who could not wait,

The Spring has not forgot.

For, see! the Springtime stands

Our drooping eyes to raise

To fair and shining strands;

The Springtime comes and lays

A lily in his hands.

“LIFE”

Man, thrust upon the world, awakes from sleep,

Knowing not whence he came nor how nor why.

His earliest impulse is an infant cry,

His final privilege is that to weep.

A combatant although he sought no strife,

A guest unwelcome come unwillingly,

Given his vision that he may not see,

He names this unnamed paradox his life.

He learns to walk the forest and to love

Its green and brown, its song and season’s change,

Yet will not taste a berry that is strange

Or tread a pathway that he knows not of.

Skeptic and doubter of the flow’r and tree,

He questions this and that investigates—

Yet drinks the beaker offered by the fates

And leaves unsolved the greater mystery.

THE PASSENGER PIGEONS

Where roam ye now, ye nomads of the air,

The old-time heralds of our old-time Springs?

Once, when we heard the thunder of your wings,

We looked upon the world—and Spring was there.

One time your armies swept across the sky,

Your feathered millions in a mighty march

Filling with life and music all the arch

Where now a lonely swallow flutters by.

Where roam ye now, ye nomads of the air?

In what far land? What undiscovered place?

Ye may have found the refuge of the race

That mortals visit but in dream and prayer.

Perhaps in some blest land ye wing your flight,

Now undisturbed by murder and by greed,

And there await the coming of the freed

Who shall emerge, like ye, from earth and night.

JUNE

I knew that you were coming, June, I knew that you were coming!

Among the alders by the stream I heard a partridge drumming;

I heard a partridge drumming, June, a welcome with his wings,

And felt a softness in the air half Summer’s and half Spring’s.

I knew that you were nearing, June, I knew that you were nearing—

I saw it in the bursting buds of roses in the clearing;

The roses in the clearing, June, were blushing pink and red,

For they had heard upon the hills the echo of your tread.

I knew that you were coming, June, I knew that you were coming,

For ev’ry warbler in the wood a song of joy was humming.

I know that you are here, June, I know that you are here—

The fairy month, the merry month, the laughter of the year!

THE BIGGER THING

Jest yesterday I watched an ant

A-totin’ in the summer sun;

I saw him puff an’ pull an’ pant

With little burdens, one by one.

A wisp of straw acrost his way

Once kept him busy fer an hour,

An’ ant-miles long he walked that day

To git around a bloomin’ flower.

The sand he carried grain by grain—

Great boulders thet he had to lift—

An’, with his engineerin’ brain,

He sunk his shaft an’ run his drift.

An’ then at night a Bigger Thing,

To which the Little Thing must kneel,

Creation’s self-appointed king,

Wiped out the anthill with its heel.

O self-made boss of things thet creep

An’ walk an’ fly, an’ yet are mute,

When I consider how you keep

Your kingdom of the bird an’ brute,

When I consider how you speak

Your will among the smaller folk

An’ send your message to the weak

In flyin’ lead an’ flamin’ smoke,

When I consider how you stalk

The quiet wood with evil breath

An’ leave behind you, as you walk,

A path of pain an’ trail of death,

I wonder how ’twould seem to you,

The silent people’s lord an’ king,

To tremble when you heard it, too—

The comin’ of some Bigger Thing?

THE CHICKADEE

There’s somethin’ ’bout the chickadee

Thet’s, somehow, awful cheerin’;

Around the shanty door it bums

An’ gethers up the crusts an’ crumbs

Cook scatters in the clearin’.

It gethers up the crusts an’ crumbs

An’ jest as glad it chatters

As if it fed on biscuit fine

All soaked in milk er dipped in wine

An’ served on silver platters.

My share of life is crusts an’ crumbs

I find somehow er other;

An’ how I wish thet I could be

Like you are, Mr. Chickadee,

My cheerful little brother!

JIM

If you go to the lake

An’ you follow the road

As it turns to the west

Of the mill

Till you come to a stake

A surveyor has throwed

Like a knife in the breast

Of the hill,

An’ you follow the track

Till you come to a blaze

By the side of the same

In a limb,

You will light on the shack,

In the timber a ways,

Of a party whose name

It is Jim.

In a day that is flown,

’Mid the great an’ the grand,

In a time when his hair

Wasn’t gray,

He was commonly known

By a fancier brand

In a city back there,

So they say.

But it’s Jim, only Jim,

Is the name thet he gives,

When you happen to bring

Up the same;

It is plenty fer him

In the woods where he lives,

Fer the man is the thing,

Not the name.

By the gleam of his eye

Thet is steady an’ clear,

By the way he will look

At you square,

You will know thet they lie

Who would make it appear

He was maybe a crook

Over there.

In the church I have stood—

Heard of preachin’ a lot

Thet I never could much

Understand;

An’ yet never the good

From a sermon I got

Thet I got from a clutch

Of his hand.

I have half an idee

Thet, if back you could turn

To the start of the trail

Fer a spell,

Thet a woman you’d see,

Thet a lot you would learn—

Thet the regaler tale

It would tell

Of a fellah too fond,

Of a woman too weak,

Of another who came

To her door—

Then an endless beyond,

Lips thet never must speak,

An’ a man but a name

Evermore.

If you go to the town

An’ you follow the street,

By the glitter an’ glow

Of the light,

To a mansion of brown

Where the music is sweet

An’ the lute whispers low

To the night,

In the dark of a room

At the end of a hall,

Where the visions of old

Flutter in,

There she sets in the gloom,

She, the Cause of it all,

In the midst of her gold

An’ her sin.

If you go to the lake

An’ you follow the road

As it turns to the west

Of the mill

Till you come to a stake

A surveyor has throwed

Like a knife in the breast

Of the hill,

An’ you follow the track

Till you come to a blaze

By the side of the same

In a limb,

You will light on the shack,

In the timber a ways,

Of a party whose name

It is Jim.

SETTIN’ IN THE SUN

I reckon the party who sets on a throne

Has a perfectly miser’ble time;

There always is someone a-pickin’ a bone

With a king or a monarch sublime.

Some calculate maybe that bein’ a king

Is a job that is gen’ally fun—

Well, well, it may be,

But the best thing, to me,

Is jest settin’ right here in the sun.

I reckon the party who sets in the chair,

In the President’s chair, an’ all that,

Must tote on his person consider’ble care

An’ a passel of woe in his hat.

Some calculate maybe it’s fun to be boss

Or even for office to run—

Well, that may be so,

But the best thing I know

Is jest settin’ right here in the sun.

I reckon the party who sets up on high

He may wish for a moment that’s calm.

It’s awful to set there an’ find by-an’-by

That you’ve done gone an’ set on a bomb.

I calculate, if they should blow up a king,

In spite of the good he has done,

Nary king he will be;

But me, as for me,

I’ll be settin’ right here in the sun.

THE PINE-TREE FLAG

Our woodsbred northern women (There were no weaklings there:

Maine, Hampshire, Massachusetts, Vermont, their glory share;

They were New England women, as brave as they were fair)—

Our woodsbred northern women (They sent their sires and sons,

The husbands of their bosoms, their well-beloved ones,

To dare the foeman’s anger and to face the foeman’s guns)—

Our woodsbred northern women (whose men went forth to war)

Wove ’mid the woods a banner their bairns and brothers bore,

Wove ’mid the woods a banner to carry on before.

Our woodsbred northern women wove not in red or gold;

There were no stripes of crimson, no constellations bold;

It was a simpler pattern their aspirations told.

Our woodsbred northern women a simpler flag disclose;

Upon the snowy linen like their New England snows,

By women’s hands embroidered, a single pine-tree rose.

Our woodsbred northern women knew naught of warlike things,

The bloody skill of soldiers, the heavy pomp of kings;

They knew no better music than that the pine-tree sings.

Our woodsbred northern women (There were no weaklings there)

Wove not a blood-red banner for sire and son to bear—

But northern snow, and pine-tree, and purity, and pray’r.

Our woodsbred northern women (whose men went forth to war)

Sent them not forth in passion to fight on sea and shore

But with a holy purpose gave up the sons they bore.

Our woodsbred northern women, no more against the skies

Your strange, unwarlike banner in cause or conflict flies;

But we see your souls courageous in your children’s children’s eyes.

INSPIRATION

A poet sang of human things,

Of gorgeous queens and mighty kings,

And gems that glisten;

He praised the brassy front of show,

The ruby’s fire and diamond’s glow,

Yet none would listen.

He wove him many labored rimes

Of ended days and coming times,

Of deeds that stirred him;

He wrote of pomp and circumstance,

The flap of flag, the light of lance,

But no one heard him.

And thus he learned to know the pain

Of him who sings but sings in vain

To ears averted,

Like one who wakes his sweetest tone

To unresponsive walls of stone

In halls deserted.

When all the merry melodies

He sang his fellow men to please

Brought none to hear him,

He turned from splendor and from pelf

To sing a measure for himself,

A song to cheer him.

He wrote a song of long ago—

A vale where yellow lilies grow

Beside a river,

A path that leads the weary feet

Where meadowland and waters meet

And rushes quiver.

He wrote a song of childhood days,

Of pleasant shade and wooded ways

And summer quiet—

A bridge that spanned a gushing rill,

A humble cot upon a hill,

With roses by it.

’Twas not the creature of his art,

This song upwelling from his heart

In moments lonely;

With memory his eyes grew dim,

For then his own soul sang to him,

The poet only.

But other mortals heard his tale

Of woodland path and verdant vale

To heaven winging,

And men who scorned his song before

Sought out the poet’s open door

To hear him singing.

Thus came to him his mistress Fame,

Clad in her aureole of flame

And smile supernal;

No more a fleeting vision now,

She placed upon the singer’s brow

The kiss eternal.

And then the poet, fool and sage,

Turned gently from his written page,

While bravos thundered,

And, when he saw the listening throng

Of those who once had spurned his song,

He greatly wondered.

TO A CAGED BIRD

Voice of the forest, tongue by which it speaks

The throbbing gladness of its vernal time,

No more, no more, your rising pinion seeks

The heights sublime.

Voice of the forest, once your gay wings beat

Against the mountain diademed with stars;

Now do men bid you sing a song as sweet

To prison bars.

Only a singer that they, passing, heard

And then desired, like book and pipe and bowl—

Knowing nor caring when they cage a bird

They cage a soul.

THE CHICKAMAUGA OAK

September came with harvest sun,

The alchemist of old,

Across the fields of green to run

And turn them into gold.

But here was neither corn nor grain,

Nor need of alchemist,

For verdant vale and upland plain

No busy plow had kissed.

The men who once had turned the sod

And scattered here the seed

O’er other hills and valleys trod

To serve their dearest creed.

A hotter sun shone overhead,

The cannon’s sulphur breath;

They sowed the seed whose bloom is red

And final fruit is death.

Here stood the Chickamauga oak

That cool September morn

And from its night of sleep awoke

To hear the blare of horn,

To hear the tramp of marching feet,

The steady clank of steel,

The hoofbeats of the horses fleet

And rumble of the wheel.

Around it broke the crimson gale,

Up rose the clouds of war;

Down poured the slanted sheets of hail

On Chickamauga’s shore.

Red lightning flashed from barking gun

While cannon thundered by,

And son and sire and sire and son

Exchanged their battle cry.

Above them neutral still it stood,

The Chickamauga oak,

Nor questioned whose the purpose good

And whose the wrongful stroke;

And, when the line of battle passed

Where broke the storm anew,

Impartially its shade it cast

On fallen gray and blue.

The battle long is ended now,

The fife and drum are still;

Again the men of Georgia plow

The fertile field and hill.

Again the bright September sun

Turns waving grain to gold

And still the crystal waters run

As in the days of old.

Still stands the Chickamauga oak—

But now beneath its shade

Lie those who parried stroke and stroke

And wielded blade and blade.

For north and south, for blue and gray,

Impartially it grieves,

And lays on both their graves to-day

The cerement of its leaves.

SUMMERTIME

The leaves upon the alders clapped their hands, their little hands—

An errant breeze had teased them into laughter.

A ray of sun went dancing o’er the lands, the fertile lands,

The perfume of a rose came running after.

The waters of the river caught their smile, their cheery smile,

And rippled joy to ev’ry merry comer.

A robin fluttered softly to the stile, the shady stile,

And raised his head to sing a song of Summer.

A dainty maid came tripping o’er the grass, the springing grass,

The alder touched her gently on the shoulder.

The zephyr kissed the tresses of the lass, the little lass,

The saucy ray of sun was even bolder.

The waters came to meet her, lapped her feet, her tiny feet,

The roses threw their perfume all around her.

’Twas then I knew the Summertime, the Summertime complete—

’Tis Summertime forever since I found her!

CONTRAST

Nature loves neither silences nor noise,

She has her silence and she has her sound.

Yet all the melody that she employs

But serves to make her silence more profound.

The sweeping desert, yellow, bare and mute,

Seems deader for a wheeling vulture’s scream.

The single quaver of a lonely lute

But makes the night seem nearer to a dream.

The sea is silent far from shores unseen,

Save where a ripple tumbles to abyss;

As whitened water makes the green more green,

The day is calmer for the bubble’s hiss.

From such as these I learn the forest’s charm—

’Tis not its silence, silent though it be;

It is its sound unpoisoned with alarm,

Its whisper like the whisper of the sea.

Shouting nor silence, neither enters here—

Only the melody of far-off things.

A drifting cloud makes skies more fair appear,

The wood is stiller for the whir of wings.

RAIN

Rainin’, is it? So it is—

An’ I knew it would.

When a man has rheumatiz

In this old left stem of his

He can tell as good

When it’s go’n’ to leak

As your fancy weatherman

Down here in Chicago can,

If he thinks a week.

An’ I guess it’s jest because

Rheumatiz an’ Nature’s laws

Sort of work together—

Lots of moisture in the air,

Rheumatiz a-plenty there,

Both mean stormy weather.

This left stem of mine can smell

Water miles away;

This old stem of mine can tell

Fifty furlongs from a well

Where it ought to lay.

An’ I’ll tell you why:

This old stem an’ me has tramped,

Waded, swum an’ drove an’ camped,

Never gittin’ dry,

Forty Winters, forty Springs;

Do you wonder thet she sings

When she smells the water?

If you fellahs really knew

All that laig an’ me went through

Guess you’d think she oughter.

You ain’t never had the luck

Swampin’ in the snow;

None of you ain’t never stuck

To your boot-tops in the muck

When it’s ten below.

There ain’t none of you

Ever drove the Chippeway

In the early days of May

When a norther blew,

When the river water froze

In your boots an’ in your clo’es—

Freezin’, thawin’, freezin’.

If this stem of mine finds out

When there’s water ’round about,

Surely there’s a reason.

An’, besides, there’s quite a line

Of such signs of rain;

There is many another sign

’Ceptin’ this old stem of mine

Thet is just as plain.

There is bunions yet—

Fer a corn er bunion is

’Most as good as rheumatiz

Prophesyin’ wet.

When you see a cat eat grass,

When you see the small-mouth bass

Sendin’ up a bubble,

When you hear a rain-crow caw—

It is simply Nature’s law

Indicatin’ trouble.

Rainin’, is it? So it seems;

It’s a nasty night.

Yonder how the street lamp gleams!—

Like the light you see in dreams,

Soft an’ far an’ white,

Like the light you see

When you let life’s half-hitch slip,

When you kind of lose your grip

On the things thet be.

An’ I sometimes think the shore

Thet we all are headin’ for

Looks so far an’ ghostly

’Cause we’re lookin’ (like to-night

We are lookin’ at the light)

Through a fog-bank mostly.

How the asphalt pavements shine!—

Almost lookin’ clean.

Ev’ry lamp post makes a line

Like the shadow of a pine

On a snowy scene.

In the gutter nigh

Little ripples curl an’ comb,

Little dirty rivers foam,

In an hour to die.

They are like the stream of life,

Full of work an’ play an’ strife,

Proud with splash an’ splutter.

Each believes himself a flood—

Most of us is only mud

Runnin’ down a gutter.

Rainin’? Sure enough it is,

But it ain’t the goods;

Doesn’t git right down to biz

Like the whirling raindrops whiz

Up there in the woods.

It’s a city shower,

Like the other kinds of stuff

In the city, mostly bluff,

Lastin’ fer an hour.

Up there, when it rains, it rains,

Fillin’ rivers, floodin’ plains,

Down the mountains washin’.

Up there when a rain we git,

When we’re really through with it,

Things are jest a-sloshin’.

Fer a rainstorm in the brush

Is the wettest thing,

Ground beneath you soft as mush

An’ around you all a hush,

Not a bird to sing—

Jest the drippin’ slow

Of the raindrops on the leaves,

Spillin’ from a billion eaves

On the earth below;

Jest a blanket in the mire,

Jest a smudgy kind of fire,

Weak an’ slow an’ smoky;

Breakfast—pancakes simply lead;

Dinner—wet an’ soggy bread;

Supper—biscuits soaky.

Rainin’, is it? So it is.

Glad I’m high an’ dry.

When a man has rheumatiz

In this old left stem of his

Keep inside, say I.

Now, this city stuff

Ain’t like woods rain near as wet,

Ain’t like woods rain is, an’ yet

It is wet enough.

Course the woods rain is the best,

It is dampest, healthiest,

Better altogether;

But I guess I’ll stay inside

Tryin’ to be satisfied

With this city weather.

DOWN GRADE

Yes, boy, I know—you do not think;

You only hear the glasses clink

And feel the bogus joy of drink.

Life looks all Summer through a glass;

The whisky road is green with grass—

But life and Summer both will pass.

It’s easy now to drink or not,

To drink a little or a lot;

But after all your drinking, what?

May it not happen ere the grave

The thing you laugh at you will crave?—

The master will become the slave?

God! I have seen them: Boys like you,

The frolickers of fighting crew,

Who never thought and never knew,

Who took the road that dips and gleams,

That runs ahead of singing streams

(Yet somehow never downward seems),

With this same foolish passion played,

The same old merry journey made,

Who took the road of easy grade—

Till night came on, till sank the sun,

Till shadows gathered one by one

Around the path, and day was done.

’Twas then they turned; but now the hill

Was high behind them, and the rill

Within the valley dark and still—

Around, the level of the plain;

Above, a rocky path of pain

To climb, if they would rise again.

I am no preacher called to preach;

I am no teacher fit to teach

You younger men of better speech.

Yet I have walked the merry road

Where laughing rivers downward flowed,

And climbed again with all the load,

With all the load a man acquires

Who follows after his desires

Until he finds his lusts are liars,

Until he finds, as find he will,

The peace, the joy, his age to fill

He left behind him on the hill.

My preaching is not perfect, Jack;

Yet truth, at least, it does not lack—

For I have been there, boy, and back.

UNKNOWN

We deck the grave of him who came back home again to sleep;

But what of him unknown to fame for whom the lonely weep?

Yea, what of him in unknown grave unmarked by stone or tomb;

Shall over him no standard wave, no Springtime roses bloom?

Weep not, dear heart, for him who lies beneath the Georgia pine;

He sleeps beneath more tender skies than are these skies of thine,

And blossoms tremble o’er his head as gentle and as fair—

The flowers above the unknown dead his God has planted there.

And when the breeze, the southern breeze, the pine above him swings

Of his beloved northern trees a melody it sings—

Yea, like the roar of waves that sweep upon an unseen shore,

He hears the sighing, in his sleep, of cedars by his door.

THE IRISH

Fer forty-odd year I have followed the timber

From the crooked St. Croix to the rollin’ Cloquet,

An’ there ain’t any camp thet you yaps kin remember

Thet I haven’t seen in my lumberin’ day.

I’ve skidded with roundheads who’d only come over,

With hunyacks I’ve swamped it fer many a mile;

But the time thet I felt I was livin’ in clover

Was bunkin’ with lads from the Emerald Isle.

Fer who was the boys thet was catty an’ frisky,

The first on a jam with a peavey in hand?

Who done the most work an’ who drunk the most whisky

An’ set us a pace on the water an’ land?

When the timber piled high at the bend in the river

Then who was the fellahs to break it in style?

Who laughed at the things thet made other men shiver?

The happy-go-luckies from Emerald Isle.

When it come to a scrap they was quick on the trigger;

To call them a name was to go to the mat.

They worshiped a woman an’ hated a nigger

An’ fought fer a friend at the drop of the hat.

They fought, when they fought, with the fists thet God give ’em—

No knife er no gun is an Irishman’s style.

There never was yet any walkin’ boss driv ’em,

Not even a boss from the Emerald Isle.

A dago was first this America grabbin’,

Who sailed out of Spain with a schooner er two.

It may be Columbus who set in the cabin—

I’ll bet it was Irish thet made up the crew.

Fer fallin’ the timber, er cussin’ the cattle,

Er breakin’ a rollway, er drivin’ a spile,

Er ridin’ quick water, er winnin’ a battle,

Is fun fer the boys from the Emerald Isle.

I am old, an’ the times an’ the people are changin’—

The top-loader now has a derrick to help;

The college perfessors the forests are rangin’;

The lumberjack now is a different whelp.

The woods of the North they shall pass into story,

A story we tell with a tear an’ a smile—

But the men who will fill all its pages with glory

Will be mostly the lads from the Emerald Isle!

THE PATH

It winds its way along the shaded hill,

Disdaining distance, seeking only ease.

It turns aside to linger by a rill,

It climbs a slope to rest beneath the trees

Or breathe the perfume of a Summer breeze.

Here time is nothing, haste a thing unknown—

The hot, straight highway for the craze of speed;

The path is made for them who walk alone,

Whose God is Nature, and the woods their creed,

To follow blindly where the path may lead.

No stern surveyor made it thus and so,

Nor north nor south nor east nor west it tends.

It dips to kiss the pool where lilies grow,

It rises joyously where ivy bends

And meets in fond embraces with its friends.

Through brooding branches and embroidered leaves

The sunshine filters in a golden rain,

Transforms the tufted weeds to shining sheaves,

The tangled grass to waving harvest grain,

The marshy muskeg to a purple plain.

This is a path of velvet from the loom

Of droning Summer. Never human hand

Wove such a pattern, bright with rose abloom

Along its border. Never artist planned

This brilliant carpet flung across the land.

Now princes leave their castles, kings their thrones,

And unattended walk these sylvan aisles.

They pause to muse beside this heap of stones

More beautiful than all the granite piles

Reared with slow labor on their ample miles.

Sweet, solemn splendor of the silent wood,

More dear you are than all the haunts of men;

For never mortal in your presence stood

And listened to the whisper of the glen

But songs forgotten sang to him again.

Perhaps it is his mother’s voice he hears,

The faint reëcho of her cradle croon

That sends him groping down the ended years

To find again some long-discarded boon,

To find again some long-departed June.

Then, by the magic of the shade and sun,

Of tree and rose and brook and verdant sod,

This world shall seem to be that other one

Where feet walk never, yet where souls have trod—

And he shall hold communion with his God.

THE MYSTERY

Heard a rustle in the brush

Only yesternight;

Heard a rustle in the hush,

Somethin’ out of sight—

Jest a footfall on the ground,

Shakin’ of a tree;

But we argued all around

What the thing could be.

Jack, the stable-boy, he said

Likely ’twas a colt—

Farmer’s colt thet got its head,

Broke its halter holt.

Bill, the cookhouse flunkey, swore

’Twas a bear er cub

Huntin’ round the cookhouse door

Fer a snack of grub.

Pete, who likes to hunt when Fall

Comes around each year,

Said it wasn’t that at all—

Thet it was a deer.

Frank, who drives the two-ox pair,

Said they made him laff,

Said their colt er deer er bear

Simply was a caff.

So they set an’ argufied

What the thing could be;

Ev’ry fellah took a side,

Had a theory.

Jack he chinned it with the chaps,

Bill with all the boys;

Mac, who’s deef, he said perhaps

There wasn’t any noise.

What the rustle was about,

No one ever knew;

But one fact I figgered out

From that gabby crew:

People look with diff’rent eyes,

Hear with diff’rent ears;

That what closest to them lies

Ev’rything appears.

Ev’ry nation is the best

To the man from there,

Ev’ry state beats all the rest

When their sons compare.

Do you wonder at the lot

Of religious creeds?—

Each a special God has got

Fer his special needs.

Harps an’ music fer the gay,

Huntin’ fer the red;

Atheists expect to stay

Permanently dead;

Streets of sapphire fer the Jew;

Fer the weary, rest—

Each, accordin’ to his view,

Thinks his heaven best.

An’ I’m puzzled, I admit,

Puzzled at the maze—

Heaven, you kin figger it

Forty-seven ways:

Heaven with a street of gold;

With a jasper gate;

Heaven where the very old

Still must sit an’ wait.

If there are so many there,

There beyond the blue,

Heavens round an’ heavens square,

Gentile, Injun, Jew—

All thet I can do is trust,

Since they can’t agree,

When I lay me “dust to dust”

There’ll be one fer me.

THE PLAYGROUND

The city street, the city street,

Lies heavy on the town—

An awful avenue of heat,

Whose rays of yellow Summer beat

Upon the stones of brown,

Where little children’s weary feet

Creep slowly up and down.

The houses rise, the houses rise,

Beside the thoroughfare;

Their windows look with bloodshot eyes

O’er huddled roofs to smoky skies,

And find no promise there;

And childhood’s voice of laughter dies

In pestilential air.

The city great, the city great—

It is so big a thing!

From city gate to city gate,

From somber dawn to even late,

It throbs with marketing;

It has no moment it may wait

To hear the children sing.

The little ones, the little ones,

The buds that never bloom,

(While underneath the breathless suns

The stream of life forever runs

Through arteries of gloom),

Look on your stately Parthenons

And find so little room!

There is a street, another street,

Beyond the city’s wall,

Beyond the corridors of heat,

Where waters pure and waters sweet

In crystal cadence fall—

And to the children’s tiny feet

Their liquid measures call!

Its tenements, its tenements,

Are neither grim nor gray;

And from each verdant eminence

Their crimson-throated residents

Pour music to the day,

Their choristing inhabitants

Sing loud a roundelay.

O fairy shores, O merry shores,

Away from slime and sin!—

With leafy roofs and grassy floors,

Where robin nests and swallow soars

When Summer days begin—

Oh, let us open wide the doors

And ask the children in!

THE SWAMPER

I am the under dog,

I am the low-down cuss,

I am the standin’ joke,

I am the easy meat.

Fellah thet skids the log

Gits all the fame an’ fuss—

What of the man who broke

Roads fer the hosses’ feet?

Sing of the arm thet’s strong,

Sing of the saw thet shines,

Sing of the chopper’s might,

Sing of the boss’s brain;

Who ever sung your song,

Swampers among the pines,

Fellahs who led the fight

Out in the snow an’ rain?

We are the pioneers,

We are the great advance,