The fact became apparent--the reader will probably have discovered it
some time since--that _we had been wooding all night at the same
woodyard_!
WHEN THE ALLEGASH DRIVE GOES THROUGH
BY HOLMAN F. DAY
We're spurred with the spikes in our soles;
There is water a-swash in our boots;
Our hands are hard-calloused by peavies and poles,
And we're drenched with the spume of the chutes;
We gather our herds at the head,
Where the axes have toppled them loose,
And down from the hills where the rivers are fed
We harry the hemlock and spruce.
We hurroop them with the peavies from their sullen beds of snow;
With the pickpole for a goadstick, down the brimming streams we go;
They are hitching, they are halting, and they lurk and hide and dodge,
They sneak for skulking-eddies, they bunt the bank and lodge;
And we almost can imagine that they hear the yell of saws
And the grunting of the grinders of the paper-mills, because
They loiter in the shallows and they cob-pile at the falls,
And they buck like ugly cattle where the broad dead-water crawls;
But we wallow in and welt 'em, with the water to our waist,
For the driving pitch is dropping and the drouth is gasping "Haste"!
Here a dam and there a jam, that is grabbed by grinning rocks,
Gnawed by the teeth of the ravening ledge that slavers at our flocks;
Twenty a month for daring Death--for fighting from dawn to dark--
Twenty and grub and a place to sleep in God's great public park;
We roofless go, with the cook's bateau to follow our hungry crew--
A billion of spruce and hell turned loose when the Allegash drive goes
through.
Pages:
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282
283
284
285
286
287
288
289
290