Elk Country
FROM lands of the elk and the pine-tree,
Of hemlock and whitewood and maple,
You ask me to write you a lyric
Shall thrill with the cries of the forest,
And flow like the sap of the maple,—
The rich yellow blood of the maple,
That hath such a wild, lusty sweetness,
Such a taste of the wilderness in it.
And surely 't were pleasant to summon
The days which so lately have vanished,
The friends who were part of their pleasure.
Right cheery for me, in the city,
To think once again of the sunsets
We watched from the crest of the hilltop,
Alone on the stumps in the clearing;
When slowly the forms of the mountains,
Our own hills, our loved Alleghanies,
Grew hazy and distant and solemn,
Cloaked each with the shade of his neighbor;
Like rigid old Puritans scorning
The passion and riot of color,
Of yellow and purple and scarlet,
Which haunt the gay court of the sunset,
Where Eve, like a wild Cinderella,
Awaits the gray fairy of twilight.
Sweet, ever, to think of the forests,
Their cool, woody fragrance delicious;
To think of the camp-fires we builded
To baffle those terrible pungies;
To think how we wandered, bewildered
With wood-dreams and delicate fancies
Unknown to the life of the city.
To tread but those cushioning mosses;
To lie, almost float, on the fern-beds;
To feel the crisp crush of the foot on
The mouldering logs of the windfall,
Were things to be held in remembrance.
Dost recall how we lingered to listen
The sound of the wood-robin's bugle,
Or bent the witch-hopple to guide us,
As one folds the page he is reading,
And felt, as we peered through the stillness,
Through armies and legions of tree-trunks,
Such solemn and brooding sensations
As told of the birth of religions,
As whispered how men grow to Druids
When the fly-wheel of work is arrested,
And they live the still life of the forest?
Ay, here in the face of the woodman,
You see how the woods have been preaching,
[...] Read more
poem by Silas Weir Mitchell
Added by Poetry Lover
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