More Songs From Vagabondia | Page 3

brier,
A silver warning!
Sudden, a dare--
Lyric
experiment--
Up like a lark in the air,

Higher and higher and higher,

The song shoots out of our blunder
Of thought to the blue sky of
wonder,
And broken strains only fall down
Like pearls on the roofs
of the town.
Somebody says they have come from the moon,
Seen with their eyes
Eldorado,
Sat in the Bo-tree's shadow,
Wandered at noon
In the
valleys of Van,
Tented in Lebanon, tarried in Ophir,
Last year in
Tartary piped for the Khan.
Now it's the song of a lover;
Now it's
the lilt of a loafer,--
Under the trees in a midsummer noon,

Dreaming the haze into isles to discover,
Beating the silences into a
croon;
Soon
Up from the marshes a fall of the plover!
Out from

the cover
A flurry of quail!
Down from the height where the slow
hawks hover,
The thin far ghost of a hail!
And near, and near,

Throbbing and tingling,--
With a human cheer
In the earth-song
mingling,--
Mirth and carousal,
Wooing, 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