D 



IN THE WILDERNESS 1 

 (Phi Beta Kappa Poem. May, 1913) 



I 



I stand as in a dream within a wood, 

 A forest crass, men call "The Wilderness," 

 Of ill-grown oak trees and stunt, scanty pines, 

 With sumacs dun and huddling sassafras, 

 Enmeshed with brambles rude and tangling vines, 

 Its mossy brooksides blue with violets, 

 Its red soil ever redder with men's hurt. 

 Men named this forest once "the Poisoned Woods," 

 And it was poisoned by the wrath of man, 

 'Twas trebly poisoned by the flames of Hell 

 That burned through every corner of the wood. 



Out from the forest, as in nightmare dream, 



Out from its straggling trees and struggling vines, 



Out from its red soil, redder with men's hurt, 



From ravaged bank-sides blue with violets, 



From withering venom of its flames of Hell, 



I see a sad procession creeping down, 



Full seven miles of maimed and broken men, 



Full seven miles of ghastly shapes of men 



Pouring like vomit from the Wilderness; 



Out from the pious shades of Salem Church, 



Out from the Catherine Furnace on the hill, 



From sparse farm-houses saturate with dread, 



Field hospitals of gruesome awfulness, 



Where women, war-crazed, neither knew nor recked 



Of their own children if alive or dead, 



From Sunlight's enfilade where Sedgwick fell, 



The Bloody Angle, by McCool's sweet spring, 



From the old wayside inn whose awful name 



Men spoke in bated whispers Chancellors ville! 



1 Published in "War's Aftermath." In the writing of this poem I had the 

 benefit of valuable criticisms by Dr. Gottfried Hult of the chair of English in 

 the University of North Dakota. 



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