Here in a lodge of pines I sit;

The canopy thrown over it

Is heaven’s own of very blue;

Due east and west its precincts lie

And always the all-seeing eye

Of summer’s sun is shining through.

 

Its portals open to the west;

The chipmunk gray and sober dressed,

The tyler is: You see him dodge

To challenge every new alarm:

He has no sword upon his arm

But well he guards this secret lodge.

 

Out master is that giant pine

Who bends o’er us with mein divine

To keep the lodge in order trim:

His wardens are two gray-beard birch

Who sit like elders in a church

Or make decorous bows to him.

 

The deacons are two slender trees,

Who move about whene’er the breeze

Brings orders from the master’s seat;

Our organist? Where thickest glooms

Are darkening in the pine top’s plumes

The brother winds out music beat.

 

Whoever knocks upon the door

To learn the ancient wildwood lore,

That one he is our candidate:

We strip him of his city gear,

And meet him on the level here,

Then to our ways initiate.

 

We slip the hoodwink from his eye

And bid him look on earth and sky

To read the hieroglyphics there;

More ancient these than Golden Fleece

Or Roman Eagle, Tyre, or Greece,

Or Egypt old beyond compare.

 

On grass and stone and flower and sod

Is written down by hand of God

The secrets of this Masonry;

Who has the hoodwink from his eyes

May in these common things surprise

The awful signs of Deity.

 

Here bird and plant and man and beast

Are seeking their Eternal East:

And here in springtime may be heard,

By him who doth such teachings seek

With praying heart, and wise, and meek,

The thundering of the old Lost World.

 

All things that in creation are

From smallest fly to largest star,

In this fellowship may be

For all that floweth out from Him,

From dust to man and seraphim

Belong to God’s freemasonry.

— H L Haywood, from The Builder, December 1918