The Wood Giant

From Alton Bay to Sandwich Dome,

From Mad to Saco river,

For patriarchs of the primal wood

We sought with vain endeavor.

And then we said: “The giants old

Are lost beyond retrieval;

This pygmy growth the axe has spared

Is not the wood primeval.

“Look where we will o’er vale and hill,

How idle are our searches

For broad-girthed maples, wide-limbed oaks,

Centennial pines and birches!

“Their tortured limbs the axe and saw

Have changed to beams and trestles;

They rest in walls, they float on seas,

They rot in sunken vessels.

“This shorn and wasted mountain land

Of underbrush and boulder,—

Who thinks to see its full-grown tree

Must live a century older.”

At last to us a woodland path,

To open sunset leading,

Revealed the Anakim of pines

Our wildest wish exceeding.

Alone, the level sun before;

Below, the lake’s green islands;

Beyond, in misty distance dim,

The rugged Northern Highlands.

Dark Titan on his Sunset Hill

Of time and change defiant!

How dwarfed the common woodland seemed,

Before the old-time giant!

What marvel that, in simpler days

Of the world’s early childhood,

Men crowned with garlands, gifts, and praise

Such monarchs of the wild-wood?

That Tyrian maids with flower and song

Danced through the hill grove’s spaces,

And hoary-bearded Druids found

In woods their holy places?

With somewhat of that Pagan awe

With Christian reverence blending,

We saw our pine-tree’s mighty arms

Above our heads extending.

We heard his needles’ mystic rune,

Now rising, and now dying,

As erst Dodona’s priestess heard

The oak leaves prophesying.

Was it the half-unconscious moan

Of one apart and mateless,