New Poems | Page 6

highway of choice.
HAIL! CHILDISH SLAVES OF SOCIAL RULES
HAIL! Childish slaves of social rules?You had yourselves a hand in making!?How I could shake your faith, ye fools,?If but I thought it worth the shaking.?I see, and pity you; and then?Go, casting off the idle pity,?In search of better, braver men,?My own way freely through the city.
My own way freely, and not yours;?And, careless of a town's abusing,?Seek real friendship that endures?Among the friends of my own choosing.?I'll choose my friends myself, do you hear??And won't let Mrs. Grundy do it,?Tho' all I honour and hold dear?And all I hope should move me to it.
I take my old coat from the shelf -?I am a man of little breeding.?And only dress to please myself -?I own, a very strange proceeding.?I smoke a pipe abroad, because?To all cigars I much prefer it,?And as I scorn your social laws?My choice has nothing to deter it.
Gladly I trudge the footpath way,?While you and yours roll by in coaches?In all the pride of fine array,?Through all the city's thronged approaches.?O fine religious, decent folk,?In Virtue's flaunting gold and scarlet,?I sneer between two puffs of smoke, -?Give me the publican and harlot.
Ye dainty-spoken, stiff, severe?Seed of the migrated Philistian,?One whispered question in your ear -?Pray, what was Christ, if you be Christian??If Christ were only here just now,?Among the city's wynds and gables?Teaching the life he taught us, how?Would he be welcome to your tables?
I go and leave your logic-straws,?Your former-friends with face averted,?Your petty ways and narrow laws,?Your Grundy and your God, deserted.?From your frail ark of lies, I flee?I know not where, like Noah's raven.?Full to the broad, unsounded sea?I swim from your dishonest haven.
Alone on that unsounded deep,?Poor waif, it may be I shall perish,?Far from the course I thought to keep,?Far from the friends I hoped to cherish.?It may be that I shall sink, and yet?Hear, thro' all taunt and scornful laughter,?Through all defeat and all regret,?The stronger swimmers coming after.
SWALLOWS TRAVEL TO AND FRO
SWALLOWS travel to and fro,?And the great winds come and go,?And the steady breezes blow,?Bearing perfume, bearing love.?Breezes hasten, swallows fly,?Towered clouds forever ply,?And at noonday, you and I?See the same sunshine above.
Dew and rain fall everywhere,?Harvests ripen, flowers are fair,?And the whole round earth is bare?To the moonshine and the sun;?And the live air, fanned with wings,?Bright with breeze and sunshine, brings?Into contact distant things,?And makes all the countries one.
Let us wander where we will,?Something kindred greets us still;?Something seen on vale or hill?Falls familiar on the heart;?So, at scent or sound or sight,?Severed souls by day and night?Tremble with the same delight -?Tremble, half the world apart.
TO MESDAMES ZASSETSKY AND GARSCHINE
THE wind may blaw the lee-gang way?And aye the lift be mirk an' gray,?An deep the moss and steigh the brae?Where a' maun gang -?There's still an hoor in ilka day?For luve and sang.
And canty hearts are strangely steeled.?By some dikeside they'll find a bield,?Some couthy neuk by muir or field?They're sure to hit,?Where, frae the blatherin' wind concealed,?They'll rest a bit.
An' weel for them if kindly fate?Send ower the hills to them a mate;?They'll crack a while o' kirk an' State,?O' yowes an' rain:?An' when it's time to take the gate,?Tak' ilk his ain.
? Sic neuk beside the southern sea I soucht - sic place o' quiet lee Frae a' the winds o' life. To me, Fate, rarely fair, Had set a freendly company To meet me there.
Kindly by them they gart me sit,?An' blythe was I to bide a bit.?Licht as o' some hame fireside lit?My life for me.?- Ower early maun I rise an' quit?This happy lee.
TO MADAME GARSCHINE
WHAT is the face, the fairest face, till Care,?Till Care the graver - Care with cunning hand,?Etches content thereon and makes it fair,?Or constancy, and love, and makes it grand?
MUSIC AT THE VILLA MARINA
FOR some abiding central source of power,?Strong-smitten steady chords, ye seem to flow?And, flowing, carry virtue. Far below,?The vain tumultuous passions of the hour?Fleet fast and disappear; and as the sun?Shines on the wake of tempests, there is cast?O'er all the shattered ruins of my past?A strong contentment as of battles won.
And yet I cry in anguish, as I hear?The long drawn pageant of your passage roll?Magnificently forth into the night.?To yon fair land ye come from, to yon sphere?Of strength and love where now ye shape your flight,?O even wings of music, bear my soul!
Ye have the power, if but ye had the will,?Strong-smitten steady chords in sequence grand,?To bear me forth into that tranquil land?Where good is no more ravelled up with ill;?Where she and I, remote upon some hill?Or by some quiet river's windless strand,?May live, and love, and wander hand in hand,?And follow nature simply, and be still.
From this grim world, where, sadly, prisoned, we?Sit bound with others' heart-strings as