Classic Poem

THE ROAD MAKERS

Over the hilltops of New England the first rough roads,
Well-called highways, ran,
Dotted here and there with the settlers' unpainted abodes.
Built on a primitive plan;
Everywhere commanding the country in case of surprise
By wolf or Indian.

Rocky here, or crossing a ledge, and here deep in sand,
Gullied by torrents of rain,
White, unshaded, with dangerous gulches on either hand,
Narrower than a lane,
So that if two wagons met the drivers would angrily argue —
To pass without thrust were in vain.

Here the farmer by working a day once a month could pay
The bulk of his county tax;
With his cart and his horse he would fill with sods or with clay
The damaged and rutted tracks,
Or in winter with his ox-team force a way
Through the deep snow's drifted packs.

Now when a road must be built they invoke the assistance of Science;
Surveyors, with compass and chain,
Putting the bulwark of hills or the river's vast width to defiance,
Conquering forest and plain,
Joining with the forces of Nature in splendid and fertile alliance
Human genius and brain.

Follow the fellers of forests and diggers of ditches and dykes,
Levelling hills, filling sloughs;
Gangs with their bullying bosses who quell incipient strikes,
Swarming with sweat-streaming brows,
Giuseppes, Giovannis, Sicilians, harsh-treated by Patricks and Mikes,
Always ready for rows.

Cough-racked cutters of granite for culverts and pile-founded piers,
Workers of iron and steel,
Hammering rivets to bind the poised cantilever's huge tiers
Over chasms where heads reel;
Settlers of sleepers, rail-layers, wielders of steel-cutting shears,
Working with feverish zeal.

Straight through the bowels of mountains, starting from opposite points,
Swiftly the tunnel bores.
There's the thud of compressed-air drills, the crash of the blast, the joints,
Where meet the hollowed cores
Under the central peak, are microscopic — at ceiling,
Curving sides and floors!

Traffic must enter the city; whole squares for the station are taken,
Lofty buildings are razed,
Marble-rich waiting halls take the place of houses forsaken;
Where once the engine-fires blazed
Now the tracks by the electrical locomotive are shaken,
Sunk deep in pits or upraised.

Depths cannot stopor any height block the makers of roads;
Rivers and estuaries
May interpose, but beneath them they dive; great trains with their loads
Far below (where the ferries
Hampered by fog stagger blindly) arrive and depart undelayed —
Trade's endless tributaries.

Hail, oh ye makers of highways, wielders of pick and of shovel,
Hail, ye surveyors so skilled!
Hail, ye levellers living for months in tent or in hovel!
Hail, ye mechanics who build!
Ye are the men that steel-bind the land into intimate union.
Hail to your epochal Guild!