Classic Poem

Behold the morn! and now begins the toil.
The first loud axe alarms the forest's shade;
And there the first tree falls, and falling wide,
With spreading arms that tear their downward way
Strips the adjacent branches; the loud crash
Thunders to Heaven, and the astonished sun
Looks down the murderous gap. Thus, ever thus,
In the community of men, a wrong
To one deals injury to many more.
Hark, how the roar runs echoing through the woods.
And every oldest oak and sycamore
Thrills with prophetic feeling of its fall.
Now marks each labourer his future home;
And wheresoe'er a spring gives out its rill,
There grows the first rude temporary hut—
Named, in the language of the pioneer,
“The half-faced camp”—of hurried saplings built,
And bound by withes of vines, and roofed with bark.
In open air the steaming cauldrons swing,
While the blue smoke sweeps up among the limbs,
Tangled, impeded; where, far over all,
The forest eagle, circling, sails amazed.
Some on the prairie stake their future hearths,
Crossing the river at its nearest ford;—
There, where the crystal o'er the pebbles slides,
Leaving the imprint of the earliest wheels
Which ever pressed these cool, delicious sands.
Days come and go: at every break of dawn—
While yet the gibbous moon, above the west,
Hangs like a ghostly fragment of white cloud—
The youths are forth to find the forest game;
And oft the prairie to the woodland gives
The rifle's shrill alarm; and many a morn,
Ere the red sun hath climbed his first slant hour,
The dun deer from the bended shoulder falls,
Prone, at the cabin door. Still sounds the axe.
For many weeks the heavy forests fall,
And, falling, groan aloud, and, groaning, die;
And, dying, yield their vernal souls in smoke,
And sink in crumbled ashes to the ground,
Which the rough plow, among the jagged roots
Oft stalled, with difficult progress turns beneath
The black and antique mould. And now behold
The various crops are sown, and in the soil
Await the genial rain and summer sun,
To swell the primal harvest of the land.
This done, the pioneer may breathe a day;
And, looking round him, choose a fitter spot
To rear his home and plant his cabin ground.
Then follows trimming of the fallen logs;
The hewing, and the rolling into place,
Occasion oft of many a festive scene,
When come the neighbours, each with axe or team,
Accomplishing, by well concerted strength,
In one short day a heavy season's task.
Behold, even now, upon the gentle slope,
And near this spring which, from its rocky urn,
Pours down a runnel through a bed of moss,
The wooden dwelling must be reared to-day,
And Baldwin points the spot. With axe, and adze,
And sledge, and iron bar, and voices glad,
The labourers come, and make the toil a play.
Some place the trunks, while others notch, and hew,
And fit the ends, until, with log on log,
The walls ascend—at either corner manned—
Until, at last, against the evening sky
They stand complete, and, in the golden sun,
The mounted toilers glow like sentinels
Upon a tower of old; and now the eve,
With mirth and music filled, concludes the scene.
Thus, while the crops are springing, spring the homes,
And ruder garners for the winter store,
Till lo, a village smiles along the stream;
And all the air, with odours of the wood
Fresh-hewn, o'erfloods the place with redolence,
Sweeter than winds from far magnolian isles.
Gratefully to the ear the various sounds
Of pastoral life discourse: the lowing kine,
The neighing steeds, and early-crowing cocks—
Which, like clear silver bells, awake the dawn—
The only bells which mark the forest hours,
Till, hark! the smith's half-sheltered anvil rings,
And the light sparkles star the morning dusk.
And there the wheelwright rolls his first stout wheel
To take the burning tire; while at the stream,
Where toiled the beaver, lo, the breastwork grows,
And whistling builders labour mid their logs.
Here, in the pleasant sunny afternoons,
Old Master Ethan takes his little flock;
And in the shade of one great forest tree,
Left to embower the parson's summer door,
On new-fallen timber seats them round, and there
Sets up the moderate by-laws of his school.
And the low murmur of the urchins' lips
Floats on the air, commingling with the sound
Of whispering leaves that flicker overhead;
And, when the task is done, with rod and line
He strolls the woods along the sunset stream.
Ere many weeks go by, still other trains,
Fresh-breathing of the East, arrive, and fright
The farther forest with the flashing axe.
There, foremost in the crowd to welcome them.
Pale Amy stands, with disappointed gaze,
And sadly questions every newest comer,
If he has seen or heard, upon the road,
Aught of a youthful wagoner or horseman,
Hailing from Hazelmead, and bound this way.
And oft the shaken head, or careless “No,”
Strikes through her eye or ear, until her heart
Tolls in her bosom like a bell of death.
Lo! once again, upon that starlit rock,
Where there shall come no smiling moon to-night;
For she is gone behind her wonted veil,
Gone to her monthly cloister of deep shade,
To clear her brow, in silent penitence,
Of painful memories of nightly ills
Which she beheld on earth.—Lo, once again,
And e'en the stars seem shrinking in the blue;
And o'er the prairie's unreflecting waves
The black south-west exalts its stormy wings,
And the hot light, fanned from those gusty vans,
Darts up the sky in sudden, transient dawns;
While o'er the stream, and o'er the sultry grass,
The myriad fire-flies mimic the far cloud.—
Lo, once again; but not the tranquil scene,
Where love led fancy in a wildered maze,
Through constellated gardens in the blue;
But holier, if holier can be.
Step lightly; for 'tis God's deep, chastening sorrow
Usurps the hour, and fills its solemn task.
Two forms are there; and one, with posture prone,
Hides her sad face upon the other's lap.
“I wait, and wait, and yet he will not come;
My mother chides me for my fruitless grief;
My father frowns upon me at his board;
Oh, better I had died before I loved!
Oh, better I had floated with the stream,
Floated, and drowned among the muddy drift!”
Whereat the other clasps her in her arms,
And, speaking, smooths aside her tear-wet hair:
“We have been friends from childhood's early time,
When we went tottering truants to the field,
And lost ourselves among the harvest grass;
And we were friends together in the school,
Walking the path, at morn and eve, with hands
Locked each in each; and we were doubly friends,
When first we interchanged, in whispers low,
The secrets of our loves. And when misfortune
Falls, like a tree beneath whose shade we built,
Not dreaming of the storm, shall we not be,
As now we are, with triple friendship bound?
Look up, dear friend, and kiss me for reply.
E'en though an unkind father closed his door,
Another stands, inviting, open wide;
And when my Amy hath nowhere to rest,
Olivia shall be homeless. Cheer, take cheer!
The dreadful sea you shuddered to behold,
Is but a troubled verdure, like the prairie,
Which, from the distance, looks an ocean wide,
But nearer seen becomes a flowery pasture.
And look! the cloud, which threatened from afar,
Sails, like a ship, around the verge remote.
And leaves us undismayed!”