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
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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,
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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
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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 part of the
nuthatch—is
heard;
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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
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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,
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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
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sniff
of a prowling bear.
And only the stars are above him at night, and the
trees
that creak and grown,
And the frozen, hard-swept mountain-crests with
their
silent fronts of stone,
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As he watches the sinking glow of his fire and the
wavering
flames upcaught,
Cleaning his rifle or mending his moccasins, sleepy
and
slow of thought.
Or when the fierce snow comes, with the rising wind,
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from
the grey north-east,
He lies through the leaguering hours in his bunk like
a
winter-hidden
beast,
Or sits on the hard-packed earth, and smokes by his
draught-blown
guttering fire,
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Without thought or remembrance, hardly awake, and
waits
for the storm to tire.
Scarcely he hears from the rock-rimmed heights to the
wild
ravines below,
Near and far-off, the limitless wings of the tempest
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hurl
and go
In roaring gusts that plunge through the cracking
forest,
and lull, and lift,
All day without stint and all night long with the
sweep
of the hissing drift.
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But winter shall pass ere long with its hills of snow
and
its fettered dreams,
And the forest shall glimmer with living gold, and
chime
with the gushing of streams;
Millions of little points of plants shall prick through
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its
matted floor,
And the wind-flower lift and uncurl her silken buds
by
the
woodman’s door;
The sparrow shall see and exult; but lo! as the
spring
draws gaily on,
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The woodcutter’s hut is empty and bear, and the
master
that made it is gone.
He is gone where the gathering of valley men
another
labour yields,
To handle the plough, and the harrow and scythe,
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in
the heat of the summer fields.
He is gone with his corded arms, and his ruddy face,
and
his moccasined feet
The animal man in his warmth and vigour, sound,
and
hard, complete.
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And all summer long, round the lonely hut, the
black
earth burgeons and breeds,
Till the spaces are filled with the tall-plumed ferns
and
the triumphing forest-weeds;
The thick wild raspberries hem its walls, and, stretch-
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ing
on either hand,
The red-ribbed stems and the giant-leaves of the
sovereign
spikenard stand.
So lonely and silent it is, so withered and warped
with
the sun and snow
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You would think it the fruit of some dead man’s toil
a
hundred years ago;
And he who finds it suddenly there, as he wanders
far
and alone,
Is touched with a sweet and beautiful sense of some-
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thing
tender and gone,
The sense of struggling life in the waste, and the
mark
of a soul’s command,
The going and coming of vanished feet, the touch of
a
human hand.
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