Classic Poem

I went back home last year to the North Woods —
Up where I lumbered nearly fifty years ago;
It all seemed new and strange and different.
There were the broad, new roads with white guard rails,
Slashed in the hills we lumber-jacks stripped bare.
It looks to me there'll be as much again
Good pine as we cut down, in just ten years:
Not like the whopping burnt-out stumps you see
Half charred among the stubbly underbrush;
That's " first-growth, " gone forever. You won't see
Pine that it took four hundred years to grow
In the North Woods again, but the new crop will be
As good as the old " second-growth " we cut.

There's miles and miles of the North Woods I knew
Blindfolded years ago; now it looks strange —
Like some new country. It's a " Park, " they say.
The State has taken it and bought the farms,
But farmers can stay on, and campers come
If they obey the rules of forestry
The State has posted up all through the Woods,
And cut for firewood only fallen trees
Or the old creaking scrubs with crumbling hearts
Like to crash down in the first winter gale.
They have a name for what they aim to do:
'Tis " conservation, " sort of saving up
The woods and headwaters up in the hills
For children's children: — I join hands with it.

When I had hoofed a bit, I struck old Factorytown.
The factory's tumbled down some sixty year,
But the town stuck there, rooted 'twixt cross roads.
The land was part of the John Burnam grant.
He had two townships granted by the State
In early days, if he would settle them
With immigrants — or so folks always said.
Many a time I've heard the old men tell
How he took beechnuts down to where ships land,
And spread them out and said, " Now come with me, "
To starved out folk from County Antrim way.
" There isn't gold around these foreign parts,
But there's rich grain — buckwheat; it grows as large
As these few kernels I've brought down with me. "

They took his land and held the grant for him
And nearly starved the first year they were there,
Then prospered fairly. They were stern, grim folk —
Protestant Irish — and they toiled and made
Those mountain valleys blossom like the rose.
You never saw such farms — Old Summerville
Raised tons of rye and oats on the new land,
And grew so rich he took it in his head
To go to Kansas; he went on out there,
And grasshoppers ate everything he had.

'Twas there the Irish weavers, yearning back
To their old home, dammed up the brawling creek
And built a factory close beside the road
To weave fine calico. It didn't pay,
But after the old looms were taken out
The name stuck fast — the place was Factorytown .
I think you'll find still in old houses there
Some scraps in patchwork of that calico,
With little roses running on buff ground.
But mostly it has gone the way of everything.
The Factorytown you know forgets the spot
The old dam crossed the creek; the country's changed.

And folks have changed; I hear a Polack built
A shack up on the old Gid Stackhouse place;
And Johnson's store — a German owns it now
And keeps it neat and all methodical.
I liked it better with the sheet-iron stove
And clutter of old barrels and sacks and things,
And strings of apples hanging down from hooks,
And knitted socks and leggings on the floor,
And nothing ever quite in the same spot.
It was a kindly place; we lumber-jacks
Always came there to sit on pay-day nights,
To gather round the stove and hear the yarns
Old Johnson read us from the Weekly News .
The stove would get red hot, then we'd push back
And talk and roar.

The store's so spick-span now
A man don't dare to sit there any more
And talk. He buys and hears the clink
Of silver in the new cash register:
Bill Johnson kept coin in a leather bag.
He had a bit of skin-flint blood in him,
But somehow it seemed right to give his price,
If 'twas too high. You thought maybe he'd had
An extra tax, or that someone had died
Among his kinfolk. If you couldn't pay
He'd " trust " ; they said he lost a lot that way.
" So much for so much " never troubled us.
The farmers were the misers in those days:
A lumber-jack spent money like a lord
While his pay lasted: 'twas the fun we craved. —
Oh, life was kind of human in those days!

They've built a new hotel in Factorytown;
The old one rotted down upon its sills.
A smart Jew bought the dust heap for a song,
And put a new one up; the white State road
Runs past it and the autos toot and screech
Their horns through Factorytown now every day,
And the farm-horses aren't scared any more.
I like the new hotel; it's plumb sure fine,
But it's not home to me like the old one
With its round pillars and the bright green blinds.
I always thought the White House looked like it
Before I saw it, but somehow, to me,
It made me think of old George Washington
And Valley Forge and wars with Indians.

The country's changing fast; I wonder why
The State plans " conservation " all the time,
And yet forgets the most important thing —
To just conserve the old America
We knew. It's slipping — slipping every day,
And we won't long remember what we've been.

The timber's growing up so fast again;
The mountain streams are all a-bursting full;
The State is sending seeds and bulletins
To tell the farmers how to grow their crops,
And foreigners come tumbling in pell-mell
To do it all. It kind of makes me sad;
I'm not-at-home up here; my friends have gone —
The folks that first came over and became
Americans. I know I'm just dead wrong.
Men laugh at me and say the new folks here
Will be the same. I know it may be so,
But something's gone that never can come back.
I can't lay hands on it, no more can you;
But it's still in the woods. When I get blue
I go and sit beside an old skidway
And shut my eyes: far off the supper horn
Blows from the Shanty, and I hear the thump
Of green logs falling on the hemlock skids, —
The tapping of the axes far away.
It don't stay long. I stretch, and light my pipe,
And watch a red squirrel chittering on a bough.