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 o’er 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 lake’s 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 world’s 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 grove’s 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-tree’s mighty arms
    Above our heads extending.

We heard his needles’ mystic rune,
    Now rising, and now dying,
As erst Dodona’s 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.