More Songs From Vagabondia | Page 9

of lovers' dreams!?The last red glow of the setting sun?On the red brick wall?Of the neighboring house,?And the scramble of red roses over it!
Slowly, slowly?The night smokes up from the city to the stars,?The faint foreshadowed stars;?The smouldering night?Breathes upward like the breath?Of a woman asleep?With dim breast rising and falling?And a smile of delicate dreams.
Softly, softly?The wind comes into the garden,?Like a lover that fears lest he waken his love,?And his hands drip with the scent of the roses?And his locks weep with the opiate odor of honeysuckle.?Sighing, sighing?As a lover that yearns for the lips of his love,?In a torment of bliss,?In a passionate dreaming of bliss,?The wind in the trees of the garden!
How intimate are the trees,--?Rustling like the secret darkness of the soul!?How still is the starlight,--?Aloof in the placidity of dream!
Outside the garden?A group of negroes passing in the street?Sing with ripe lush voices,?Sing with voices that swim?Like great slow gliding fishes?Through the scent of the honeysuckle:
_My love's waitin',?Waitin' by the river,?Waitin' till I come along!?Wait there, child; I'm comin'.
Jay-bird tol' me,?Tol' me in the mornin',?Tol' me she'd be there to-night.?Wait there, child; I'm comin'._
Waves of dream!?Spell of the summer night!?Will of the grass that stirs in its sleep!?Desire of the honeysuckle!?And further away,?Like the plash of far-off waves in the fluid night,?The negroes, singing:
_Whip-po'-will tol' me,?Tol' me in the evenin',?"Down by the bend where the cat-tails grow."?Wait there, child; I'm comin'._
Lo, the moon,?Like a galleon sailing the night;?And the wash of the moonlight over the roofs and the trees!
Oh, my bride,?Come down from yonder lattice where you bide?Like a charmed princess in a Persian song!?I look up at your yellow window-panes,?Set in the night with far-off wizardry.?Come down, come down; the night is fain of you,?The garden waits your footstep on its walks.
Lo, the moon,?Like a galleon sailing the night;?And the wash of the moonlight over the red brick wall and the roses!
A gleam of lamplight through an open door!?A footfall like the wind's upon the grass!?A rustle like the wind's among the leaves!...?Dim as a dream of pale peach blooms of light,?Blue in the blue soft pallor of the moon,?She comes between the trees as a faint tune?Falls from a flute far off into the night....?So Death might come to one who knew him Love.
A SONG FOR MARNA.
Dame of the night of hair?Like blue smoke blown!?World yet undreamed-of there?Lurks to be known.
Dame of the dizzy eyes,?Lure of dim quests!?World of what midnights lies?Under thy breasts!
Dame of the quench of love,?Give me to quaff!?There's all the world's made of?Under thy laugh.
Dame of the dare of gods,?Let the sky lower!?Time, give the world for odds,--?I choose this hour.
SEPTEMBER WOODLANDS.
This is not sadness in the wood;?The yellowbird?Flits joying through the solitude,?By no thought stirred?Save of his little duskier mate?And rompings jolly.
If there's a Dryad in the wood,?She is not sad.?Too wise the spirits are to brood;?Divinely glad,?They dream with countenance sedate?Not melancholy.
NANCIBEL.
The ghost of a wind came over the hill,?While day for a moment forgot to die,?And stirred the sheaves?Of the millet leaves,?As Nancibel went by.
Out of the lands of Long Ago,?Into the land of By and By,?Faded the gleam?Of a journeying dream,?As Nancibel went by.
A VAGABOND SONG.
There is something in the autumn that is native to my blood-- Touch of manner, hint of mood;?And my heart is like a rhyme,?With the yellow and the purple and the crimson keeping time.
The scarlet of the maples can shake me like a cry?Of bugles going by.?And my lonely spirit thrills?To see the frosty asters like a smoke upon the hills.
There is something in October sets the gypsy blood astir;?We must rise and follow her,?When from every hill of flame?She calls and calls each vagabond by name.
THREE OF A KIND.
Three of us without a care?In the red September?Tramping down the roads of Maine,?Making merry with the rain,?With the fellow winds a-fare?Where the winds remember.
Three of us with shocking hats,?Tattered and unbarbered,?Happy with the splash of mud,?With the highways in our blood,?Bearing down on Deacon Platt's?Where last year we harbored.
We've come down from Kennebec,?Tramping since last Sunday,?Loping down the coast of Maine,?With the sea for a refrain,?And the maples neck and neck?All the way to Fundy.
Sometimes lodging in an inn,?Cosey as a dormouse--?Sometimes sleeping on a knoll?With no rooftree but the Pole--?Sometimes halely welcomed in?At an old-time farmhouse.
Loafing under ledge and tree,?Leaping over boulders,?Sitting on the pasture bars,?Hail-fellow with storm or stars--?Three of us alive and free,?With unburdened shoulders!
Three of us with hearts like pine?That the lightnings splinter,?Clean of cleave and white of grain--?Three of us afoot again,?With a rapture fresh and fine?As a spring in winter!
All the hills are red and gold;?And the horns of vision?Call across the crackling air?Till we shout back to them there,?Taken captive in the hold?Of their bluff derision.
Spray-salt gusts of ocean blow?From the rocky