Song The Eigth

Cape on the waves! In sucking caves
The seething pots of ocean boil:
Good ship and true, they suck not you,
Home plunging in your honest toil.

Up in yon sweet blue fluency of air,
Our mountain trees, greening of dewy light,
Stand in their prosperous height:
Finch, merle, and throstle pipe their morning quarrel there.

Summer secrets here they be
Tangled deepest: Shy of view,
The woodman lorn holds, beast and bird, with you
The wild unwritten by-law, large and lax,—
Guild of the forest free.
Down in the sounding wood there goes his vehement axe.

Home, red with earth, the weary hind
Plods through the thistly stubbles wide.
Shrill birds hang wavering down the wind.
The miry hunters homeward ride.