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 oer 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 lakes 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 worlds 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 groves 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-trees mighty arms     Above our heads extending.     We heard his needles mystic rune,     Now rising, and now dying,     As erst Dodonas priestess heard     The oak leaves prophesying.     Was it the half-unconscious moan     Of one apart and mateless,     The weariness of unshared power,     The loneliness of greatness?     O dawns and sunsets, lend to him     Your beauty and your wonder!     Blithe sparrow, sing thy summer song     His solemn shadow under!     Play lightly on his slender keys,     O wind of summer, waking     For hills like these the sound of seas     On far-off beaches breaking,     And let the eagle and the crow     Find shelter in his branches,     When winds shake down his winter snow     In silver avalanches.     The brave are braver for their cheer,     The strongest need assurance,     The sigh of longing makes not less     The lesson of endurance.