THE WOODS

DOUGLAS MALLOCH

THE
WOODS

BY
DOUGLAS MALLOCH
AUTHOR OF “IN FOREST LAND”

NEW YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

Copyright, 1913,
By GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

To
MY SON DOUGLAS
1902-1909

CONTENTS

THE WOODS

POSSESSION

There’s some of us has this world’s goods,

An’ some of us has none—

But all of us has got the woods,

An’ all has got the sun.

So, settin’ here upon the stoop,

This patch o’ pine beside,

I never care a single whoop—

Fer I am satisfied.

Now, take the pine on yonder hill:

It don’t belong to me;

The boss he owns the timber—still,

It’s there fer me to see.

An’, ’twixt the ownin’ of the same

An’ smellin’ of its smell,

I’ve got the best of that there game,

An’ so I’m feelin’ well.

The boss in town unrolls a map

An’ proudly says, “It’s mine.”

But he don’t drink no maple sap

An’ he don’t smell no pine.

The boss in town he figgers lands

In quarter-sections red;

Lord! I just set with folded hands

An’ breathe ’em in instead.

The boss his forest wealth kin read

In cent an’ dollar sign;

His name is written in the deed—

But all his land is mine.

There’s some of us has this world’s goods,

An’ some of us has none—

But all of us has got the woods,

An’ all has got the sun!

WHEN THE GEESE COME NORTH

Their faint “honk-honk” announces them,

The geese when they come flying north;

Above the far horizon’s hem

From out the south they issue forth.

They weave their figures in the sky,

They write their name upon its dome,

And, o’er and o’er, we hear them cry

Their cry of gladness and of home.

Now lakes shall loose their icy hold

Upon the banks, and crocus bloom;

The sun shall warm the river’s cold

And pierce the Winter’s armored gloom;

The vines upon the oaken tree

Shall shake their wavy tresses forth,

The grass shall wake, the rill go free—

For, see! The geese are flying north!

SPRING FEVER

Not exactly lazy—

Yet I want to sit

In the mornin’ hazy

An’ jest dream a bit.

Haven’t got ambition

Fer a single thing—

Regaler condition

Ev’ry bloomin’ Spring.

Want to sleep at noontime

(Ought to work instead),

But along at moontime

Hate to go to bed.

Find myself a-stealin’

Fer a sunny spot—

Jest that Springy feelin’,

That is what I’ve got.

Like to set a-wishin’

Fer a pipe an’ book,

Like to go a-fishin’

In a meadow-brook

With some fish deceiver,

Underneath a tree—

Jest the old Spring fever,

That’s what’s ailing me!

MARCH

In what a travail is our Springtime born!—

’Mid leaden skies and garmenture of gloom.

Wild waves of cloud the drifting stars consume

And shipless seas of heaven greet the morn.

The forest trees stand sad and tempest-torn,

Memorials of Summer’s ended bloom;

For unto March, the sister most forlorn,

No roses come her pathway to illume.

Yet ’tis the month the Winter northward flies

With one last trumpeting of savage might.

Now stirs the earth of green that underlies

This other earth enwrapped in garb of white.

And while poor March, grown weary, droops and dies

The little Springtime opens wide its eyes.

CHILDREN OF THE SPRING

What means the Spring to you?—

The tree, the bloom, the grass;

Wide fields to wander through;

A primrose path to pass;

Bright sun, and skies of blue;

The songs of singing streams;

The rippling riverside

Awakening from dreams;

Fair-browed and azure-eyed—

Oh, thus the Springtime seems.

Yet not for such as you

She comes with song and voice,

’Tis not for such as you

She makes the heart rejoice,

She comes with skies of blue.

Spring’s children are the ill—

’Tis these she comes to cheer;

Upon the window-sill,

Within the chamber drear,

She sits her song to trill.

On narrow cots they lie

Within the quiet room,

Their sky a square of sky

Cut from the inner gloom,

From dreary walls and high.

Spring means so much to these,

The prisoners abed!—

The perfume of the breeze,

The birdsong overhead,

The echoed melodies.

The window open wide—

Behold, the Spring is here!

No more the countryside

Is dim and dark and drear;

Now stronger runs the tide.

The pale and patient wife,

Her babe upon her breast,

Forgets the night, the knife,

And sleeps the sleep of rest,

Awakening to life.

The old, the very old,

Behold in budding Spring

Another year unfold—

And life, a tinsel thing,

Is turned again to gold.

And e’en the empty cot,

Whose Spring has come too late,

The one who now is not,

The one who could not wait,

The Spring has not forgot.

For, see! the Springtime stands

Our drooping eyes to raise

To fair and shining strands;

The Springtime comes and lays

A lily in his hands.

“LIFE”

Man, thrust upon the world, awakes from sleep,

Knowing not whence he came nor how nor why.

His earliest impulse is an infant cry,

His final privilege is that to weep.

A combatant although he sought no strife,

A guest unwelcome come unwillingly,

Given his vision that he may not see,

He names this unnamed paradox his life.

He learns to walk the forest and to love

Its green and brown, its song and season’s change,

Yet will not taste a berry that is strange

Or tread a pathway that he knows not of.

Skeptic and doubter of the flow’r and tree,

He questions this and that investigates—

Yet drinks the beaker offered by the fates

And leaves unsolved the greater mystery.

THE PASSENGER PIGEONS

Where roam ye now, ye nomads of the air,

The old-time heralds of our old-time Springs?

Once, when we heard the thunder of your wings,

We looked upon the world—and Spring was there.

One time your armies swept across the sky,

Your feathered millions in a mighty march

Filling with life and music all the arch

Where now a lonely swallow flutters by.

Where roam ye now, ye nomads of the air?

In what far land? What undiscovered place?

Ye may have found the refuge of the race

That mortals visit but in dream and prayer.

Perhaps in some blest land ye wing your flight,

Now undisturbed by murder and by greed,

And there await the coming of the freed

Who shall emerge, like ye, from earth and night.

JUNE

I knew that you were coming, June, I knew that you were coming!

Among the alders by the stream I heard a partridge drumming;

I heard a partridge drumming, June, a welcome with his wings,

And felt a softness in the air half Summer’s and half Spring’s.

I knew that you were nearing, June, I knew that you were nearing—

I saw it in the bursting buds of roses in the clearing;

The roses in the clearing, June, were blushing pink and red,

For they had heard upon the hills the echo of your tread.

I knew that you were coming, June, I knew that you were coming,

For ev’ry warbler in the wood a song of joy was humming.

I know that you are here, June, I know that you are here—

The fairy month, the merry month, the laughter of the year!

THE BIGGER THING

Jest yesterday I watched an ant

A-totin’ in the summer sun;

I saw him puff an’ pull an’ pant

With little burdens, one by one.

A wisp of straw acrost his way

Once kept him busy fer an hour,

An’ ant-miles long he walked that day

To git around a bloomin’ flower.

The sand he carried grain by grain—

Great boulders thet he had to lift—

An’, with his engineerin’ brain,

He sunk his shaft an’ run his drift.

An’ then at night a Bigger Thing,

To which the Little Thing must kneel,

Creation’s self-appointed king,

Wiped out the anthill with its heel.

O self-made boss of things thet creep

An’ walk an’ fly, an’ yet are mute,

When I consider how you keep

Your kingdom of the bird an’ brute,

When I consider how you speak

Your will among the smaller folk

An’ send your message to the weak

In flyin’ lead an’ flamin’ smoke,

When I consider how you stalk

The quiet wood with evil breath

An’ leave behind you, as you walk,

A path of pain an’ trail of death,

I wonder how ’twould seem to you,

The silent people’s lord an’ king,

To tremble when you heard it, too—

The comin’ of some Bigger Thing?

THE CHICKADEE

There’s somethin’ ’bout the chickadee

Thet’s, somehow, awful cheerin’;

Around the shanty door it bums

An’ gethers up the crusts an’ crumbs

Cook scatters in the clearin’.

It gethers up the crusts an’ crumbs

An’ jest as glad it chatters

As if it fed on biscuit fine

All soaked in milk er dipped in wine

An’ served on silver platters.

My share of life is crusts an’ crumbs

I find somehow er other;

An’ how I wish thet I could be

Like you are, Mr. Chickadee,

My cheerful little brother!

JIM

If you go to the lake

An’ you follow the road

As it turns to the west

Of the mill

Till you come to a stake

A surveyor has throwed

Like a knife in the breast

Of the hill,

An’ you follow the track

Till you come to a blaze

By the side of the same

In a limb,

You will light on the shack,

In the timber a ways,

Of a party whose name

It is Jim.

In a day that is flown,

’Mid the great an’ the grand,

In a time when his hair

Wasn’t gray,

He was commonly known

By a fancier brand

In a city back there,

So they say.

But it’s Jim, only Jim,

Is the name thet he gives,

When you happen to bring

Up the same;

It is plenty fer him

In the woods where he lives,

Fer the man is the thing,

Not the name.

By the gleam of his eye

Thet is steady an’ clear,

By the way he will look

At you square,

You will know thet they lie

Who would make it appear

He was maybe a crook

Over there.

In the church I have stood—

Heard of preachin’ a lot

Thet I never could much

Understand;

An’ yet never the good