These opening lines set the scene for "Deep Woods." The speaker is apparently walking through a forest within "hearing-distance" of a highway where trucks roll by with their heavy loads. Notice the clever use of metaphor here, however. At first, it reads as though the trucks are the ones moving on with their loads "Of statues, candelabra, buttons, gold," and so forth. But "trucks" is plural, and what "staggers onward" with "its" load is singular. The reference here is to "history, / Which slows, shudders, and shifts." Therefore, the first comparison between mankind's history and the natural world is that humanity has been volatile and restless and full of tangible objects (statues, candelabra, etc.,) but the deep woods are "too still" for all that.
These lines compare.....
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