Clearing in the forest, In the wild Kentucky forest, And the stars, wintry stars strewn above! O Night that is the starriest Since Earth began to roll— For a Soul Is born out of Love! Mother love, father love, love of Eternal God— Stars have pushed aside to let him through— Through heaven’s sun-sown deeps One sparkling ray of God Strikes the clod— (And while an angel-host through wood and clearing sweeps!) Born in the wild The Child— Naked, ruddy, new, Wakes with the piteous human cry and at the mother-heart sleeps. To the mother wild berries and honey, To the father awe without end, To the child a swaddling of flannel— And a dawn rolls sharp and sunny And the skies of winter bend To see the first sweet word penned In the godliest human annal. Frail Mother of the Wilderness— How strange the world shines in And the cabin becomes chapel And the baby lies secure— Sweet Mother of the Wilderness, New worlds for you begin, You have tasted of the apple That giveth wisdom sure.... Soon in the wide wilderness, On a branch blown over a creek, Up a trail of the wild coon, In a lair of the wild bee, The rugged boy, by danger’s stress, Learnt the speech the wild things speak, Learnt the Earth’s eternal tune Of strife-engendered harmony— Went to school where Life itself was master, Went to church where Earth was minister— And in Danger and Disaster Felt his future manhood stir! All about him the land, Eastern cities, Western prairie, Wild, immeasurable, grand; But he was lost where blossomy boughs make airy Bowers in the forest, and the sand Makes brook-water a clear mirror that gives back Green branches and trunks black And clouds across the heavens lightly fanned. Yet all the Future dreams, eager to waken, Within that woodland soul— And the bough of boy has only to be shaken That the fruit drop whereby this Earth shall roll A little nearer God than ever before. Little recks he of war, Of national millions waiting on his word— Dreams still the Event unstirred In the heart of the boy, the little babe of the wild— But the years hurry and the tide of the sea Of Time flows fast and ebbs, and he, even he, Must leave the wilderness, the wood-haunts wild— Soon shall the cyclone of Humanity Tearing through Earth suck up this little child And whirl him to the top, where he shall be Riding the storm-column in the lightning-stroke, Calm at the peak, while down below worlds rage, And Earth goes out in blood and battle-smoke, And leaves him with the sun—an epoch and an age!