Alone he works—­his ringing blows
  Have banish’d bird and beast;
The Hind and Fawn have canter’d off
  A hundred yards at least;
And on the maple’s lofty top
  The linnet’s song has ceased.

No eye his labor overlooks,
  Or when he takes his rest,
Except the timid thrush that peeps
  Above her secret nest,
Forbid by love to leave the young
  Beneath her speckled breast.

The Woodman’s heart is in his work,
  His axe is sharp and good: 
With sturdy arm and steady aim
  He smites the gaping wood;
    From distant rocks
    His lusty knocks
  Re-echo many a rood.

His axe is keen, his arm is strong;
  The muscles serve him well;
His years have reach’d an extra span,
  The number none can tell;
But still his lifelong task has been
  The Timber Tree to fell.

Through Summer’s parching sultriness,
  And Winter’s freezing cold,
    From sapling youth
    To virile growth. 
  And Age’s rigid mould,
His energetic axe hath rung
  Within that Forest old.

Aloft, upon his poising steel
  The vivid sunbeams glance—­
About his head and round his feet
  The forest shadows dance;
And bounding from his russet coat
  The acorn drops askance.

His face is like a Druid’s face,
  With wrinkles furrow’d deep,
And tann’d by scorching suns as brown
  As corn that’s ripe to reap;
But the hair on brow, and cheek, and chin,
  Is white as wool of sheep.

His frame is like a giant’s frame;
  His legs are long and stark;
His arms like limbs of knotted yew;
  His hands like rugged bark;
    So he felleth still
    With right good will,
  As if to build an Ark!

Oh! well within His fatal path
  The fearful Tree might quake
Through every fibre, twig, and leaf,
  With aspen tremor shake;
    Through trunk and root,
    And branch and shoot,
  A low complaining make!

Oh! well to Him the Tree might breathe
  A sad and solemn sound,
A sigh that murmur’d overhead,
  And groans from underground;
As in that shady Avenue
  Where lofty Elms abound!

But calm and mute the Maple stands,
  The Plane, the Ash, the Fir,
The Elm, the Beech, the drooping Birch,
  Without the least demur;
And e’en the Aspen’s hoary leaf
  Makes no unusual stir.

The Pines—­those old gigantic Pines,
  That writhe—­recalling soon
The famous Human Group that writhes
  With Snakes in wild festoon—­
In ramous wrestlings interlaced
  A Forest Laocoon—­

Like Titans of primeval girth
  By tortures overcome,
Their brown enormous limbs they twine,
  Bedew’d with tears of gum—­
Fierce agonies that ought to yell,
  But, like the marble, dumb.

Nay, yonder blasted Elm that stands
  So like a man of sin,
Who, frantic, flings his arms abroad
  To feel the Worm within—­
For all that gesture, so intense,
  It makes no sort of din!