Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Bliss Carman, et al., eds. The World’s Best Poetry. 1904.

III. The Seasons

The Solitary Woodsman

Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts (1860–1943)

WHEN the gray lake-water rushes

Past the dripping alder-bushes,

And the bodeful autumn wind

In the fir-tree weeps and hushes,—

When the air is sharply damp

Round the solitary camp,

And the moose-bush in the thicket

Glimmers like a scarlet lamp,—

When the birches twinkle yellow,

And the cornel bunches mellow,

And the owl across the twilight

Trumpets to his downy fellow,—

When the nut-fed chipmunks romp

Through the maples’ crimson pomp,

And the slim viburnum flashes

In the darkness of the swamp,—

When the blueberries are dead,

When the rowan clusters red,

And the shy bear, summer-sleekened,

In the bracken makes his bed,—

On a day there comes once more

To the latched and lonely door,

Down the wood-road striding silent,

One who has been here before.

Green spruce branches for his head,

Here he makes his simple bed,

Crouching with the sun, and rising

When the dawn is frosty red.

All day long he wanders wide

With the gray moss for his guide,

And his lonely axe-stroke startles

The expectant forest-side.

Toward the quiet close of day

Back to camp he takes his way,

And about his sober footsteps

Unafraid the squirrels play.

On his roof the red leaf falls,

At his door the blue jay calls,

And he hears the wood-mice hurry

Up and down his rough log walls;

Hears the laughter of the loon

Thrill the dying afternoon,—

Hears the calling of the moose

Echo to the early moon.

And he hears the partridge drumming,

The belated hornet humming,—

All the faint, prophetic sounds

That foretell the winter ’s coming.

And the wind about his eaves

Through the chilly night-wet grieves,

And the earth’s dumb patience fills him,

Fellow to the falling leaves.