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Long have you wrestled, unconfounded With problems the grim old earth propounded; Meeting each taunting challenge while She watched with cold, sardonic smile, Flinching at nothing your labor met, Writing your answer in dirt and sweat.

First with your transit, pounding stakes— Rotten logs, briars, sticks and snakes; Trees of the thicket hatchet-scarred, Blazing tomorrow’s boulevard; Shaping the New World’s big romance, Unloosing your swarms of human ants, Slashing the willows, crowding in Under the maples and chinkapin; Tottering timbers—see them crash, Deafening thud and crunch and gash, Tearing their rifts where boughs arch high, Baring blue holes in the gaping sky; Follows the blasting—dynamite, Deep in the damp earth tamped in tight, Sputtering spark Into the dark, Travels the fuse to the buried guns, Vomiting stumps in hurtling tons, Falling back mangled, shattered, torn, Into the clay where they were born.

Through pine-pillared aisles the thunderings ring, Echoing canyons answering; Enter the horses—lashing reins, Yelling and curses, jangling chains, Snorting and straining, steaming brutes, Grappling hooks shackled to stubborn roots, Snug in their sockets holding fast— Steadily pulling, they yield at last! Shovel of steam—omniverous scoop, Gouging the way for one more loop; Rearing a wall that will prevail Against the push of sliding shale; Peeling a slope to fill a draw; Stuffing the crusher’s hungry maw That crumbles to bits the rock you’ve fed To blanket a roadway’s winding bed; These are the digits running through The problems that Nature’s handed you.