[Sidenote: _While you read, hear the hoof-beats of deer in the snow. And see, by their track, bleeding footprints we know._] But he left their wigwams and their love. By the hour of dawn he was proud and stark, Kissed the Indian babes with a sigh, Went forth to live on roots and bark, Sleep in the trees, while the years howled by-- Calling the catamounts by name, And buffalo bulls no hand could tame, Slaying never a living creature, Joining the birds in every game, With the gorgeous turkey gobblers mocking, With the lean-necked eagles boxing and shouting; Sticking their feathers in his hair,-- Turkey feathers, Eagle feathers,-- Trading hearts with all beasts and weathers He swept on, winged and wonder-crested, Bare-armed, barefooted, and bare-breasted. [Sidenote: _While you read, see conventions of deer go by. The bucks toss their horns, the fuzzy fawns fly._] The maples, shedding their spinning seeds, Called to his appleseeds in the ground, Vast chestnut-trees, with their butterfly nations, Called to his seeds without a sound. And the chipmunk turned a "summer-set," And the foxes danced the Virginia reel; Hawthorne and crab-thorn bent, rain-wet, And dropped their flowers in his night-black hair; And the soft fawns stopped for his perorations; And his black eyes shone through the forest-gleam, And he plunged young hands into new-turned earth, And prayed dear orchard boughs into birth; And he ran with the rabbit and slept with the stream. And he ran with the rabbit and slept with the stream. And so for us he made great medicine, And so for us he made great medicine, In the days of President Washington. III. ~Johnny Appleseed's Old Age~ [Sidenote: _To be read like faint hoof-beats of fawns long gone From respectable pasture, and park and lawn, And heartbeats of fawns that are coming again When the forest, once more, is the master of men._] Long, long after, When settlers put up beam and rafter, They asked of the birds: "Who gave this fruit? Who watched this fence till the seeds took root? Who gave these boughs?" They asked the sky, And there was no reply. But the robin might have said, "To the farthest West he has followed the sun, His life and his empire just begun." Self-scourged, like a monk, with a throne for wages, Stripped like the iron-souled Hindu sages, Draped like a statue, in strings like a scarecrow, His helmet-hat an old tin pan, But worn in the love of the heart of man, More sane than the helm of Tamerlane, Hairy Ainu, wild man of Borneo, Robinson Crusoe--Johnny Appleseed; And the robin might have said, "Sowing, he goes to the far, new West, With the apple, the sun of his burning breast-- The apple allied to the thorn, Child of the rose."