The Poetry Corner

The Wood Giant

By John Greenleaf Whittier

From Alton Bay to Sandwich Dome, From Mad to Saco river, For patriarchs of the primal wood We sought with vain endeavor. And then we said: The giants old Are lost beyond retrieval; This pygmy growth the axe has spared Is not the wood primeval. Look where we will oer vale and hill, How idle are our searches For broad-girthed maples, wide-limbed oaks, Centennial pines and birches. Their tortured limbs the axe and saw Have changed to beams and trestles; They rest in walls, they float on seas, They rot in sunken vessels. This shorn and wasted mountain land Of underbrush and boulder, Who thinks to see its full-grown tree Must live a century older. At last to us a woodland path, To open sunset leading, Revealed the Anakim of pines Our wildest wish exceeding. Alone, the level sun before; Below, the lakes green islands; Beyond, in misty distance dim, The rugged Northern Highlands. Dark Titan on his Sunset Hill Of time and change defiant How dwarfed the common woodland seemed, Before the old-time giant! What marvel that, in simpler days Of the worlds early childhood, Men crowned with garlands, gifts, and praise Such monarchs of the wild-wood? That Tyrian maids with flower and song Danced through the hill groves spaces, And hoary-bearded Druids found In woods their holy places? With somewhat of that Pagan awe With Christian reverence blending, We saw our pine-trees mighty arms Above our heads extending. We heard his needles mystic rune, Now rising, and now dying, As erst Dodonas priestess heard The oak leaves prophesying. Was it the half-unconscious moan Of one apart and mateless, The weariness of unshared power, The loneliness of greatness? O dawns and sunsets, lend to him Your beauty and your wonder! Blithe sparrow, sing thy summer song His solemn shadow under! Play lightly on his slender keys, O wind of summer, waking For hills like these the sound of seas On far-off beaches breaking, And let the eagle and the crow Find shelter in his branches, When winds shake down his winter snow In silver avalanches. The brave are braver for their cheer, The strongest need assurance, The sigh of longing makes not less The lesson of endurance.