More Songs From Vagabondia | Page 3

espousal,?Clinking of glasses?And laughter of lasses--?And the wind in the garden stoops down as it passes?To play with the hair?Of the loveliest there,?And the wander-lust catches the will in its snare;?Hill-wind and spray-lure,?Call of the heath;?Dare in the teeth?Of the balk and the failure;?The clasp and the linger?Of loosening finger,?Loth to dissever;?Thrill of the comrade heart to its fellow?Through droughts that sicken and blasts that bellow?From purple furrow to harvest yellow,?Now and forever.?How our feet itch to keep time to their measure!?How our hearts lift to the lilt of their song!?Let the world go, for a day's royal pleasure!?Not every summer such waifs come along.
Now they are off to the inn;?Hear the clean ring of their laughter!?Cool as a hill-brook after?The beat of the noon sets in!?Gentlemen even in jollity--?Certainly people of quality!--?Waifs and estrays no less,?Roofless and penniless,?They are the wayside strummers?Whose lips are man's renown,?Those wayward brats of Summer's?Who stroll from town to town;?Spendthrift of life, they ravish?The days of an endless store,?And ever the more they lavish?The heap of the hoard is more.?For joy and love and vision?Are alive and breed and stay?When dust shall hold in derision?The misers of a day.
EARTH'S LYRIC.
April. You hearken, my fellow,?Old slumberer down in my heart??There's a whooping of ice in the rivers;?The sap feels a start.
The snow-melted torrents are brawling;?The hills, orange-misted and blue,?Are touched with the voice of the rainbird?Unsullied and new.
The houses of frost are deserted,?Their slumber is broken and done,?And empty and pale are the portals?Awaiting the sun.
The bands of Arcturus are slackened;?Orion goes forth from his place?On the slopes of the night, leading homeward?His hound from the chase.
The Pleiades weary and follow?The dance of the ghostly dawn;?The revel of silence is over;?Earth's lyric comes on.
A golden flute in the cedars,?A silver pipe in the swales,?And the slow large life of the forest?Wells bade and prevails.
A breath of the woodland spirit?Has blown out the bubble of spring?To this tenuous hyaline glory?One touch sets a-wing.
THE WOOD-GOD.
Brother, lost brother!?Thou of mine ancient kin!?Thou of the swift will that no ponderings smother!?The dumb life in me fumbles out to the shade?Thou lurkest in.?In vain--evasive ever through the glade?Departing footsteps fail;?And only where the grasses have been pressed,?Or by snapped twigs I follow a fruitless trail.?So--give o'er the quest!?Sprawl on the roots and moss!?Let the lithe garter squirm across my throat!?Let the slow clouds and leaves above me float?Into mine eyeballs and across,--?Nor think them further! Lo, the marvel! now,?Thou whom my soul desireth, even thou?Sprawl'st by my side, who fled'st at my pursuit.?I hear thy fluting; at my shoulder there?I see the sharp ears through the tangled hair,?And birds and bunnies at thy music mute.
A FAUN'S SONG.
Cool! cool! cool!?Cool and sweet?The feel of the moss at my feet!?And sweet and cool?The touch of the wind, of the wind!
Cool wind out of the blue,?At the touch of you?A little wave crinkles and flows?All over me down to my toes.
"Coo-loo! Coo-loo!"?Hear the doves in the tree-tops croon.?"Coo-loo! Coo-loo!"?Love comes soon.
"June! June!"?The veery sings,?Sings and sings,?"June! June!"--?A pretty tune!
Wind with your weight of perfume,?Bring me the bluebells' bloom!
QUINCE TO LILAC: To G. H.
Dear Lilac, how enchanting?To hear of you this way!?The Man who comes a-mouching?To visit me each day
Says you too have a lover?Far lovelier than I.?And from his rapt description,?She loves you gloriously.
The Man prowls out each morning?To see if spring's begun.?What infinite amusement?These creatures offer one!
He asks me such conundrums?As no one ever heard:?The name of April's father,?The trail of every bird,
What keeps me warm in winter,?Who wakes me up in time,?And why procrastination?Is such a fearful crime.
And yet, who knows? He may be?Our equal ages hence--?With such pathetic glimmers?Of weird intelligence!
But this your blessed alien,?Why strays she roving here??Was Orpheus not her brother,?Persephone her peer?
Was she not once a dryad?Whom Syrinx lulled to sleep?Beside the Dorian water,?And still her eyelids keep
The glad unperished secret?From centuries of joy,?And memories of the morning?When Helen sailed for Troy?
Is her name Gertrude, Kitty,?Hypatia, or what??I seem to half remember,?And yet have quite forgot.
That soft Hellenic laughter!?I marvel you don't make?An effort to be early?In budding for her sake.
Just fancy hearing daily?That velvet voice of hers!?How do you quell the riot?Of sap her coming stirs?
Perhaps she puts her face up,?(Dear Charity she is!)?For messages of summer?And better worlds than this.
You cannot blush, poor Lilac;?It is not in your race.?I simply should go crimson,?If I were in your place.
Do tell her all your secrets!?The Man declares she knows?Better than any mortal?The wonder-trick of prose.
Our prose, I mean,--how beauty?Appears to you and me;?The truth that seems so simple,?Which they call poetry.
They put it down in writing?And label it with tags,?The funny conscious people?Who mask in colored rags!
They have a thing called science,?With phrases strange and pat.?My dear, can you imagine?Intelligence like that?
And when they first discover?That yellows