Ha'nts of the Kingdom of Spruce

The sheeted ghosts of moated grange
And misty wraiths are passing strange;
The gibbering spooks and elfin freaks
And cackling witches' maudlin squeaks--
--They have terrified the nations, and have laid the bravest low,
But intimidate a woodsman up in Maine? Why, bless you, no!
Merely misty apparitions or some sad ancestral spook
Serve to terrify a maiden or to warn a deathmarked duke.
But the P. I. scoffs their terrors, though he'll never venture loose
'Mongst the ha'nts that roam the woodlands in the weird domains of Spruce.
--He'll mock the fears of mystic and he'll scorn the bookish tales
Of the fearsome apparitions of the past, but courage fails
In the night when he awakens, all a-shiver in his bunk,
And with ear against the logging hears the steady, muffled thunk
Of the hairy fists of monsters, beating there in grisly play,
--Horrid things that stroll o' night-times, never, never seen by day,
For he knows that though the spectres of the storied past are vain,
There is true and ghostly ravage in the forest depths of Maine.
For even in these days P. I.'s shake
At the great Swamp Swogon of Brassua Lake.
When it blitters and glabbers the long night through,
And shrieks for the souls of the shivering crew.
And all of us know of the witherlick
That prowls by the shore of the Cup-sup-tic.
Of the Side Hill Ranger whose eyeballs gleam
When the moon hangs gibbous over Abol stream;
--Of the Dolorous Demon that moans and calls
Through the mists of Abol-negassis falls.
And many a woodsman has felt his bunk
Tossed by the Phantom of Sourdna-hunk.
There's the Giant Spook who ha'nted Lane's
Old wangan camp and rended chains
--Great iron links of the snubbing cable--
As though they were straw--who was even able
To twist the links in a mighty mat
With which he bent the forest flat
From Nahma-kanta to Depsiconneag
--Acres and acres--league after league;
Striding abroad from peak to dale
And laying on with his mighty flail.

Oh, fie for the shade of the manored hall,
A fig for a Thing in a grave-creased pall,
--For wraiths that flitter and flutter and sigh,
With flabby limbs and the sunken eye!
The woodsman recks not ye, frail ghosts,
But he knows and he bows to the deep wood's hosts,
Who sound their coming with giant breath,
Who mark their passing with storm and death,
Who shriek through blow-downs and howl o 'er lakes,
--And he hides and trembles, he shivers and shakes
When he hears the Desperate Demons loose
In the weird dominions of grim King Spruce.