Uploaded on October 19, 2011
The axe has cut the forest down,
The laboring ox has smoothed all clear,
Apples now grow where pine tress stood,
And slow cows graze instead of deer.
Where Indian fires once raised their smoke
The chimneys of a farmhouse stand,
And cocks crow barnyard challenges
To dawns that once saw savage land.
The axe, the plow, the binding wall,
By these the wilderness is tamed,
By these the white man’s will is wrought,
The rivers bridged, the new towns named.
—Elizabeth Coatsworth
Favorite Poems Old and New
edited by Helen Ferris
10.19.2023: My neighbor’s house is not exactly a farmhouse, as in: they don’t farm, but all the land around here was once farmland. Many of the rock walls are still standing.