Read this poem twice. As you read it the second time, make a list of the preceding selections of which you are reminded.

They stormed the forts of Nature,
And marched with blast and drill

On her bulwark cliffs and sapping swamps,
Her strength against their skill.

Though her torrents twisted their bridges
Like the horns of a mountain ram
And burst like a hungry tiger

Through the buttressed walls of their dam;

They threw out new spans like spiders,

And copied the beaver's art,

And broke the desert's slumber

With bloom in its rainless heart.

They tunnelled her snowy shoulders
Or wriggled up like a snake,
And laced her with iron girders
Like a martyr lashed to a stake.

And clove her spine-like ridges
From isthmus shore to shore,
And plied their mighty dredges
As she let the landslides pour.

She was harsh as a fickle mistress,
And stern as an angered god,
Then soft as the lap of a mother,
As they conquered her great untrod.

From the circles around the Arctics
To Cancer and Capricorn,

From the yellow streams of China
To the base of the Matterhorn;

They have vanquished their untamed Mother;
Though she thunders volcanic guns,

They force her to do their bidding,
Like masterful rebel sons.

CLASS ACTIVITIES

1. Read the names of your selections (see p. 159) and tell how this poem reminded you of each of them.

2. Explain the work of civil engineers. Mention three "forts of nature" which civil engineers have "stormed." (Look up "stormed" in the glossary if you do not know what it means.) 3. Name the three kinds of work which are referred to in the third stanza. What sort of construction is described in the fourth stanza? What historic event is meant in the fifth stanza? 4. Give examples showing how civil engineers have forced nature to do their bidding.

5. Make a list of the figures of speech in this poem.

Which do you think is the most fitting? Why do you think so?

6. Word study: bulwark, sapping, buttressed, fickle, vanquished.

2. A SONG OF PANAMA

ALFRED DAMON RUNYON

"Chuff! chuff! chuff! An' a mountain-bluff
Is moved by the shovel's song;

"Chuff! chuff! chuff!" Oh, the grade is rough
A-liftin' the landscape along!

We are ants upon a mountain, but we're leavin' of our dent, An' our teeth-marks bitin' scenery they will show the way

we went;

We're liftin' half creation, an' we're changin' it around, Just to suit our playful purpose when we're diggin' in the ground.

"Chuff! chuff! chuff!" Oh, the grade is rough,

An' the way to the sea is long;

"Chuff! chuff! chuff!" an' the engine's puff
Is tune to the shovel's song!

We're shiftin' miles like inches, and we grab a forest here Just to switch it over yonder so's to leave an angle clear; We're pushin' leagues o' swamps aside so we can hurry by An' if we had to do it we would probably switch the sky!

"Chuff! chuff! chuff!" Oh, it's hard enough
When you're changin' a job gone wrong;
"Chuff! chuff! chuff!" an' there's no rebuff
To the shovel a-singin' its song!

You hear it in the mornin' an' you hear it late at night It's our battery keepin' action with support o' dynamite; Oh, you get it for your dinner, an' the scenery skips along In a movin' panorama to the chargin' shovel's song!

"Chuff! chuff! chuff!" an' it grabs the scruff

Of a hill an' boosts it along;

"Chuff! chuff! chuff!" Oh, the grade is rough,

But it gives to the shovel's song!

CLASS ACTIVITIES

1. Explain the chief difference between the content of this poem and the one preceding.

2. Which of the two poets Hoffman and Runyon - looks at construction work from the viewpoint of the engineer? Which from the viewpoint of the laborer? Read the lines which cause your opinion.

3. Read the stanza in "The Civil Engineers" which is illustrated by "The Song of Panama."

4. Read lines in the two poems which are much alike.

5. Volunteer work. ama Canal.

Special report on the construction of the Pan(Secure information in the references below.) illustrations of the use of repetition in "A Song of Panama." What effect is the poet trying to make in each instance?

6. Point out two

7. What is the most striking resemblance between Runyon's poem and the poems in the preceding section?

8. What do you like best in this poem

- the thought, the vocabu

lary, the pictures, the swing, or the melody?

ADDITIONAL READINGS. - I. "Goethals," P. Mackaye. 2. "Ode on the Completion of the Panama Canal," G. W. Dresbach, Road to Everywhere, 24-25. 3. "The Steam Shovel," E. Tietjens, in H. Monroe and A. C. Henderson's The New Poetry, 536-537. 4. "The Panama Canal," G. W. Goethals, in National Geographic Magazine, 22: 149–211. 5. "Railroad Engineering," A. Williams, How It Is Done. 6. “The Panama Canal To-day," J. B. Bishop, in Scribner's Magazine, 70: 33–52. 7. "Cutting a Hemisphere in Two," G. E. Walsh, in C. L. Barstow's Progress of a United People, 107–114. 8. "The Panama Canal," W. B. Parsons, ibid., 115–124.

Divers, steeple-climbers, balloonists, and tamers of wild beasts, says Mr. Moffett, regard their work as "perfectly safe," although in

reality it is full of perils. But the men who work on bridges, he goes on to say, "show by little things that they are afraid of their work." And yet, he adds, "it seems to me that these are men with the best kind of grit in them, for although they are afraid of the bridge, they are not afraid of their fear." As you read this selection, find out why bridge-workers fear their work, and how they show that "they are not afraid of their fear."

My permit to visit the great East River bridge was granted on the express understanding that I was to hold nobody responsible for any harm that might befall me. I was fortunate in having as my companion Mr. Varian, the artist, who had faced perils of many sorts, but none like these.

First we clambered up the pile of granite, big as a church, that will hold the cable-ends; they call it the anchorage. From the top we could look along the iron street that stretched away in a slight up-grade toward the tower. We were on a level with the roadway of the bridge, and far below us spread the house-tops of Brooklyn.

Seen from here, the iron street looked delicate, not massive; its sides were trellis-work, its top frames gently slanting, and one could fancy the whole thing beautifully grown over with vines, a graceful arbor-way suspended in mid-air. And down the length of this came the strangest sounds -- one would say a company of woodpeckers of some giant sort making riot in an echoing forest. Br-r-r-ip-ip-ip-ip — br-rr-r-up-up-up-br-r-r-ap-ap-ap-ap-ap.

What was it? Now from this side, up-up-up-br-r-r-up-up, and ending abruptly. Then straightway from near the top on the other side, ap-ap-ap-br-r-r-r-ap-ap-ap. Then fainter from half-way down the street, and then from all points at once, a chorus of hammer-birds making the bridge resound in call and in answer, hammer-birds with strokes as swift as the roll of a drum. What is it?

And look! Those points of fire that glow forth here and there and vanish as the eye perceives them, tiny red lights, tiny yellow lights, that flash from far down the iron street