FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   32   33   34   35   36   37   38   39   40   41   42   >>  
ll and titan shadow, And the cannon of Trafalgar Startle Spain. Still the tides of fight are booming, And the barren blood is spilt; Still the banners are up-looming, And the hands are on the hilt; But the old world waxes wiser, From behind the bolted visor It descries at last the horror And the guilt. Yet the eyes are dim, nor wholly Open to the golden gleam, And the brute surrenders slowly To the godhead and the dream. From his cage of bar and girder, Still at moments mad with murder, Leaps the tiger, and his demon Rules supreme. One more war with fire and famine Gathers--I can hear its cries-- And the years of might and Mammon Perish in a world's demise; When the strength of man is shattered, And the powers of earth are scattered, From beneath the ghastly ruin Peace shall rise! THE WOODCUTTER'S HUT Far up in the wild and wintery hills in the heart of the cliff-broken woods, Where the mounded drifts lie soft and deep in the noiseless solitudes, The hut of the lonely woodcutter stands, a few rough beams that show A blunted peak and a low black line, from the glittering waste of snow. In the frost-still dawn from his roof goes up in the windless, motionless air, The thin, pink curl of leisurely smoke; through the forest white and bare The woodcutter follows his narrow trail, and the morning rings and cracks With the rhythmic jet of his sharp-blown breath and the echoing shout of his axe. Only the waft of the wind besides, or the stir of some hardy bird-- The call of the friendly chickadee, or the pat of the nuthatch--is heard; Or a rustle comes from a dusky clump, where the busy siskins feed, And scatter the dimpled sheet of the snow with the shells of the cedar-seed. Day after day the woodcutter toils untiring with axe and wedge, Till the jingling teams come up from the road that runs by the valley's edge, With plunging of horses, and hurling of snow, and many a shouted word, And carry away the keen-scented fruit of his cutting, cord upon cord. Not the sound of a living foot comes else, not a moving visitant there, Save the delicate step of some halting doe, or the sniff of a prowling bear. And only the stars are above him at night, and the trees that creak and groan, And the frozen, hard-swept mountain-crests with their silent fronts of
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   32   33   34   35   36   37   38   39   40   41   42   >>  



Top keywords:
woodcutter
 

nuthatch

 

chickadee

 
windless
 

friendly

 

siskins

 
scatter
 

dimpled

 

rustle

 
narrow

motionless

 

forest

 

morning

 
echoing
 
breath
 

leisurely

 

cracks

 

rhythmic

 
untiring
 

halting


delicate

 

prowling

 

living

 

visitant

 

moving

 

mountain

 

crests

 

fronts

 

silent

 

frozen


jingling

 

valley

 
scented
 

cutting

 

plunging

 
horses
 

hurling

 

shouted

 

shells

 

surrenders


slowly

 

godhead

 
golden
 

wholly

 

supreme

 
moments
 

girder

 
murder
 
booming
 
barren