Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892). The Poetical Works in Four Volumes. 1892.

Poems of Nature

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,

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.

1885.