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56
THE FIVE NATIONS
There I found me food and water, and I lay a week recruiting,
Got my strength and lost my nightmares. Then I entered on my find.
Thence I ran my first rough survey—chose my trees and blazed and ringed 'em—
Week by week I pried and sampled—week by week my findings grew.
Saul he went to look for donkeys, and by God he found a kingdom!
But by God, who sent His Whisper, I had struck the worth of two!
Up along the hostile mountains, where the hair-poised snow-slide shivers—
Down and through the big fat marshes that the virgin ore-bed stains,
Till I heard the mile-wide mutterings of unimagined rivers
And beyond the nameless timber saw illimitable plains!
