Some gathered huts, men knead the land
The slow stir where it all began
Camps became villages
And villages, towns
Dust rising at dawn
From paths in the grass.

Wilderness rose in a peak and twist
And **** ruled with an iron fist
And placed all the stones in a circle 'round
When history had found its hound.

And when did first one give it pause?
To think-- this once was wilderness.

Then cities roared and weapons slung
And stories told and songs were sung
And new dimension came from us
The animals hid in the creeping dark,
The forest we had left behind.

The first gunshot! a Chinese thing.
And when we dreamed of bearing wings,
We found that there was compromise
Between our swirling dreams and skies

And surely then, so many paused:
To think-- this once was wilderness.

A system cut into our home
And taken fast, men cut from Rome
Where new dimensions bulge and bust
Where Susie's Cities lie in Dust

Convenience met a hearty blow
With everything that science knows
When moths could find no better home
On trees with lichen less than smoke

And then it took a sinister tone:
To think, this once was wilderness.

And now, so far from the forest's edge
With half the Earth in ultraviolet
Would we agree on sacrilege,
And can we live as better pilots?

And now, so far from the forest's edge
Can we kiss what we have blessed?
With trails cut just to feel immersed
To think-- this once was wilderness.