Woodman

As thro’ the shrilling Vale, or Mountain Ground, The Labours of the Woodman’s Axe resound; Blows following Blows are heard re-echoing wide, While crackling Forests fall on ev’ry side. Thus echo’d all the Fields with loud Alarms, So fell the Warriors, and so rung their Arms.

Woodman, spare that tree! Touch not a single bough! In youth it shelter’d me, And I’ll protect it now. ’Twas my forefather’s hand That placed it near his cot; There, woodman, let it stand, Thy axe shall harm it not!

1862, Percy Bysshe Shelley, “The Woodman and the Nightingale” (written in 1818 and published posthumously) in Richard Garnett (editor), Relics of Shelley, London: Edward Moxon, p. 79, The world is full of woodmen who expel Love’s gentle dryads from the haunts of life, And vex the nightingales in every dell.

Our walk was far among the ancient trees: There was no road, nor any wood-man’s path, But the thick umbrage, checking the wild growth Of weed and sapling […]

“It is strange,” muttered Cardillac, “that so loud a roar in the forest at night should give such little indication of direction. I suppose a true woodman could not only point towards the spot, but might estimate the distance as well. I seem to be a very fool of the forest.”

One afternoon, I went with Mrs. Salter-Townshend on a tour of all her rental properties, which ranged from a woodman’s cottage on the old Somerville estate to a tower in the harbor-front castle.

The second examination is for a woodman’s badge. To pass, he is required to light a fire, using no paper and striking no more than three matches.

You, Polydote, have proved best woodman and Are master of the feast: Cadwal and I Will play the cook and servant; ’tis our match: The sweat of industry would dry and die, But for the end it works to.

c. 1611, John Fletcher, The Woman’s Prize, Act IV, Scene 3, in Comedies and Tragedies Written by Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, Gentlemen, London: H. Robinson & H. Moseley, 1647, p. 116, How daintily, and cunningly you drive me Up like a Deere to’th toyle, yet I may leape it, And what’s the woodman then?

1636, Robert Sanderson, Ad Aulam. The Fourth Sermon, Beuvoyr, July, 1636 in XXXVI Sermons, London, 8th edition, 1689, p. 413, And to get the Mastery over they self in great matters, it will behove thee to exercise this Discipline first in lesser things: as he that would be a skilful Wood-man, will exercise himself thereunto first by shooting sometimes at a dead mark.