Gaunt and black the naked pines are scrawled across the sky;
The wild wet winds are clinging where the hard peaks lift and soar;
They watch our long gray hosts of rain forever marching by,
While up through all the canyons we send our sullen roar.
From every sodden meadow we've trodden out the sun;
We've ground the pale green stalks of grass
that lifted through the hills;
Across the yelping torrents a thousand feet have run,
Till waters scream in anger and the wide-mouthed valley fills.
Among the moaning spruces we threshed our heedless way;
And out upon the barrens where the lonely spaces hide,
We stamped the miles of mosses and blackened out the day,
And waked the awful silence where all the winds have died.
The stars flamed brave before us and the greater light hung still
When the white smoke of our breath blew up
and drowned the hollow night.
We crushed them out beneath our feet and leapt from hill to hill,
Till east to east the sweep of space was rocking with our flight.
The little walls of man uprose like shields beneath our feet;
We beat upon their hollow cells a million shafts of rain;
Our wild song of freedom was loud in every street,
While down along the slimy wharves the great ships lift and strain.
The dawn pushed pale thin fingers above the flattened sea,
Groping blind white fingers that clawed the shroud of night;
'Till from the straining eddies the pale forms turned to flee,
And a million tongues of madness rose singing through the fight.
Across the quaking marshes we turned and wandered back;
The trapper in the clearing heard the wan thin hosts of rain.
We moved between the steaming trails where all the woods dripped black,
And high among the empty hills we pitched our tents again.