University of Virginia Library

Tell you the news
From Four-Brooks Farm?
Well,
But there is news to tell,
As long as my arm!
“What! a new she-calf born
To this world forlorn?”
Few things are finer
Than a fine heifer-calf,
And most things are minor;
But 't is better by half
The news that I've got now!
Such a wonderful lot now
Of heifers,—why, what now
Such farm news as this!
You were here, when, what bliss!
Alpha dropt on our planet,
And we all ran to scan it:
How the soft thing, with silk down,
Had learned to bring milk down
Without any teaching,
Example, or preaching!

Not this is the news
From Four-Brooks Farm—
Nor the ice-pond built
Where Hermit Brook spilt;
Nor the great pine we found
Thunder-burst in the middle
And spread on the ground
Like the strings of a fiddle;
Not of this, not of that,—
Such news now were flat,—
But something far racier!
Muir, of Alaska,
Path-finder, cliff-basker,
Known of bird, known of deer
(Grizzlies know him, won't harm),
John Muir has been here,
And has hitched to the farm
A great blanket glacier!
Don't flout it! don't doubt it!
'T is as sure and as clear
As if on the rock,
With chisel and knock,
A giant of eld
His message had spelled,
And ten thousand years after
We read it,—with laughter
And loyal acclaim,—
His ancestry, name,
The work he was doing,
The place whence he came,
And the journey pursuing.
“This giant of eld!
See his path,” said John Muir,
“Here it held
Northwest to southeast;
Slow and sure,
Like a king at a feast
Eating down through the list;
Inch by inch, crunch by crunch;
Yonder hollow his lunch,
Of this valley—one gobble,
Then he supped light on Cobble!
This big boulder, he bore it;
Through eons uncounted
That range there he mounted,
He tore it.
Rock-grinding; strata rending;
Always pausing; never ending;
O what a grand rumpus!
Now, down on your knees,”
Said Muir, “an you please,
And out with your compass!”
(By the way—'t was Thoreau's
As Muir well knows)
And then, in a trice,
Where the quartz glistens white,
Smooth as ice,
In the clear, slanting light
The fine striæ show,—
Like arrows they go
Northwest to southeast,
Just as John Muir pleased!

And as he spoke I saw the huge creature glide,
With speed that scarcely lessened or increased,
From the far pole to ocean's melting tide.
Through countless boreal hours
It moved on its torn pathway deep and wide;
Its shining bulk I saw
Crunching the mountain tops with monstrous maw;—
To make our Four-Brooks Farm with all its flocks and flowers.