Oh, they make a sea, frighten fawns, who take flight.
No more spouting, the swale, once a torrent, fast streaming.
Whose broad bites damn ripe bark, groove a pair of lost pines;
Oaken dam parts they snatch. . .scourge of gallant trees teeming.
Now the forest’s threadbare, like bomb-burned underwear. . .
Rape roots day and night; raPINE swag they don’t share.
Oh, say do those bark-mangle dammers yet slave
O’er the land once with trees; there’s no hope they’ll be saved.

Once a shore of a stream, a rivulet not deep—
There, there rose knotty Oak; now dead pile that reposes.
What is that which one sees where the streams banks were steep?
That the rivulet grows to a sea with no Moses.
It’s a Castor tag team; they’ve no Pollux, it seems. . .
And old story. Dissected poor trees not made beams.
It’s the bark-mangled dammers, those long toothèd knaves
O’er the land once with trees; there’s no hope they’ll be staves.

Now where is that land where once water did roar?
With the dam, it’s a shore; the lake grows in profusion.
In their home, they’re comfy; the tired beavers snore.
The woodland they rout with conifer contusion.
They refuse to save the spry sprigs they shave;
They spread terror with bites that have doomed would-be staves.
And the bark-mangled dammers have dry mouths they lave
By jamming the long teeth into Oak, trunks concave.

They cuss ’bout the beaver, the treemen whose land
Has become a moat from castor desolation.
They’re gonna get a piece of the creatures who’ve dammed;
With black powder they have made the tools for detonation.
And conquer they must, the causeway to bust—
It’s nix on this grotto: the bomb blows; dam’s dust,
And the bark-mangled dammers wash ’way with the waves,
But the land that had trees, stubble growth that’s unshaved.