Page:By Scarlet Torch and Blade.djvu/34

Meeting each taunting challenge while
She watched with cold, sardonic smile,
Flinching at nothing your labor met,
Writing your answer in dirt and sweat.

First with your transit, pounding stakes—
Rotten logs, briars, sticks and snakes;
Trees of the thicket hatchet-scarred,
Blazing tomorrow's boulevard;
Shaping the New World's big romance,
Unloosing your swarms of human ants,
Slashing the willows, crowding in
Under the maples and chinkapin;
Tottering timbers—see them crash,
Deafening thud and crunch and gash,
Tearing their rifts where boughs arch high,
Baring blue holes in the gaping sky;
Follows the blasting—dynamite,
Deep in the damp earth tamped in tight,
Sputtering spark
Into the dark,
Travels the fuse to the buried guns,
Vomiting stumps in hurtling tons,
Falling back mangled, shattered, torn,
Into the clay where they were born.

Through pine-pillared aisles the thunderings ring,
Echoing canyons answering;

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