Deep In A Valley, Green With Ancient Beech, And Wandered Through Of One Small, Silent Stream, Whose Bear-Grassed Banks Bristled With Brush And Burr, Tick-Trefoil And The Thorny Marigold, Bush-Clover And The Wahoo, Hung With Pods, And Mass On Mass Of Bugled Jewelweed, Horsemint And Doddered Ragweed, Dense, Unkempt, I Came Upon A Charcoal-Burner'S Hut, Abandoned And Forgotten Long Ago; His Hut And Weedy Pit, Where Once The Wood Smouldered Both Day And Night Like Some Wild Forge, A Wildwood Forge, Glaring As Wild-Cat Eyes. A Mossy Roof, Black, Fallen In Decay, And Rotting Logs, Exuding Sickly Mold And Livid Fungi, And The Tottering Wreck, Rude Remnants, Of A Chimney, Clay And Sticks, Were All That Now Remained To Say That Once, In Time Not So Remote, One Labored Here, Labored And Lived, His World Bound By These Woods: A Solitary Soul Whose Life Was Toil, Toil, Grimy And Unlovely: Sad, Recluse, A Life, Perhaps, That Here Went Out Alone, Alone And Unlamented. Lost Forever, Haply, Somewhere, In Some Far Wilder Spot, Far In The Forest, Lone As Was His Life, A Grave, An Isolated Grave, May Mark, Tangled With Cat-Brier And The Strawberry-Bush, The Place He Lies In; Undistinguishable From The Surrounding Forest Where The Lynx Whines In The Moonlight And The She-Fox Whelps. A Life As Some Wood-Fungus Now Forgotten: The Indian-Pipe, Or Ghost-Flower, Here That Rises And Slowly Rots Away In Autumn Rains. Or, It May Be, A Comrade Carved A Line Of Date And Death On Some Old Trunk Of Tree, Whose Letters Long Ago Th' Erasing Rust Of Moss And Gradual Growth Of Drowsy Years Slowly Obliterated: Or, May Be, The Rock, All Rudely Lettered, Like His Life, Set Up Above Him By Some Kindly Hand, A Tree'S Great, Grasping Roots Have Overthrown, Where Lichens Long Ago Effaced His Name.