Читать книгу Dark Soil - Stringer Arthur - Страница 18

Table of Contents

Ours is a dark country

When winter closes in.

The leaves are gone,

And the lakes give up their laughter,

And the snows come down,

And the tumbling streams turn quiet,

And there are no birds to sing.

Blue-white the bald hills stand

In that new-born hush,

When there is no wind,

And the world seems lost in sleep,

And the twilight sets in early

Where the saw-toothed edge of the pinelands

Gnaws at its rind of gold

Low down in the West.

Ours is a dark country,

But into its gloomy valleys

And its windrowed slopes of white

The loggers and teamsters come;

And the snow-muffled silence awakes

To the clang of the echoing ax,

The clank-clank-clink of the peavies,

The creak and whine of the log-chains

Where the great teams, rimed with frost,

Move slowly along the ice

To the crack of indignant whips

And the scream of the iron-shod runners

And the clangor of loosened chains

And the shouts of red-toqued drivers,

Snow-splashed and feathered with frost,

Where the silence is beaten back

By men at their toil.

But mostly between the hills

We hear the appeasing sound

Of their bells;

Bells through the blue-hilled morning,

Bells through the white-hilled day,

Bells through the lone long dusk

And the gathering twilight,

Deep-tongued and jubilant bells

Commingling in tone

And fading to far-off chimes;

The clamorous bells of the teamsters,

On slow-moving sleigh-tongues,

On shaken neck-yokes and hame-points,

Persistent, silvery sweet,

Oddly forlorn and musical;

Bells on horse-collars whitened with hoar,

Valorous and jocund bells

On the buckles of straining tugs;

Bells that chime and carol and sing

Through the lonely winter woodlands

Where the lonely stars come out

And men must have their music

In the midst of toil.