Classic Poem

Where once the ancient hemlock forest stood
Tracked by the panther and the roving bear,
A clearing spreads, still margined by the wood,
And he lies there.

Upon the land he cleared he lies asleep—
Lonely and sturdy as in life, he lies
On a great hilltop, where the west winds leap
Straight from the skies.

Watched by the stars from sunset till the day,
Flooded with sun from dawn till twilight falls,
And guarded by the hills, that stretch away
Like purple walls.

Here, where no flowers by human hands were strewed,
The wind and rain that mourned around his bier
Bring simple flowers of the field and wood
To bloom all year.

The brown earth warms above him in the Spring
Starred with white wind-flowers; seed and bud put forth
To seize the robe of Summer, whispering
Back to the north.

The clustering ferns are shot with golden light
When through the trees the flickering sunlight falls;
And, answering to the voice of winds, by night
The river calls.

The hemlocks of the ancient wood are gone—
Gone with the stealthy panther and the bear;
And he whose work subdued them slumbers on
Unseeing there.

Unmoved by all the silence of the stars,
The cry of winds, the first sweet yearning breath
Of Spring—but yet, his narrowed life had bars
As close as death.

Hardship and toil weighed on him, stern and grim;
The year was marked by Winter's dread return;
The forest was an enemy to him,
To fell, and burn.

And eyes that ever look on want and pain
By their own fireside, grow too dim to rise
And see the hilltops glorious after rain Against the skies.

The forest waked in him no artist mood—
He heard no mystic voices in its call;
It meant a scant and toil-won livelihood—
And that was all.

So still, above the ever-darkened eyes,
The deaf ears, and the lips that were so mute,
Moves the strange glory of the light-filled skies;
The wind's low flute

Sighs into slumber; close around him press
The violet and the bellwort, clustering deep,
As if, at last, Earth's arms in tenderness
Held him, asleep.