Songs from Vagabondia

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Richard Hovey
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Title: Songs from Vagabondia
Author: Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey
Release Date: April 23, 2006 [EBook #18238]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
0. START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SONGS
FROM VAGABONDIA ***
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SONGS FROM VAGABONDIA
BLISS CARMAN
RICHARD HOVEY
DESIGNS BY
TOM B METEYARD
BOSTON COPELAND AND DAY
LONDON
ELKIN
MATHEWS AND JOHN LANE
MDCCCXCIV

_Copyright, 1894._
BY BLISS CARMAN AND RICHARD
HOVEY.
_To H.F.W., for debts of love unpaid,
Her boys inscribe this book
that they have made._
CONTENTS.
VAGABONDIA
A WAIF
THE JOYS OF THE ROAD

EVENING ON THE POTOMAC
SPRING SONG
THE FAUN

A ROVER'S SONG
DOWN THE SONGO
THE
WANDER-LOVERS
DISCOVERY
A MORE ANCIENT
MARINER
A SONG BY THE SHORE
A HILL SONG
AT
SEA
ISABEL
CONTEMPORARIES
THE TWO BOBBIES

A TOAST
THE KAVANAGH
A CAPTAIN OF THE
PRESS-GANG
THE BUCCANEERS
THE WAR-SONG OF
GAMELBAR
THE OUTLAW
THE KING'S SON

LAURANA'S SONG
LAUNA DEE
THE MENDICANTS

THE MARCHING MORROWS
IN THE WORKSHOP
THE
MOTE
IN THE HOUSE OF IDIEDAILY
RESIGNATION

COMRADES
VAGABONDIA.
Off with the fetters
That chafe and restrain!
Off with the chain!

Here Art and Letters,
Music and wine,
And Myrtle and Wanda,

The winsome witches,
Blithely combine.

Here are true riches,

Here is Golconda,
Here are the Indies,
Here we are free--
Free as
the wind is,
Free, as the sea.
Free!
Houp-la!
What have we
To do with the way
Of the Pharisee?
We go or we
stay
At our own sweet will;
We think as we say,
And we say or
keep still
At our own sweet will,
At our own sweet will.

Here we are free
To be good or bad,
Sane or mad,
Merry or grim

As the mood may be,--
Free as the whim
Of a spook on a spree,--

Free to be oddities,
Not mere commodities,
Stupid and salable,

Wholly available,
Ranged upon shelves;
Each with his puny form

In the same uniform,
Cramped and disabled;
We are not labelled,

We are ourselves.
Here is the real,
Here the ideal;
Laughable hardship
Met and
forgot,
Glory of bardship--
World's bloom and world's blot;
The
shock and the jostle,
The mock and the push,
But hearts like the
throstle
A-joy in the bush;
Wits that would merrily
Laugh away
wrong,
Throats that would verily
Melt Hell in Song.
What though the dimes be
Elusive as rhymes be,
And Bessie, with
finger
Uplifted, is warning
That breakfast next morning
(A
subject she's scorning)
Is mighty uncertain!
What care we? Linger
A moment to kiss--
No time's amiss
To a
vagabond's ardor--
Thee finish the larder
And pull down the
curtain.
Unless ere the kiss come,
Black Richard or Bliss come,
Or Tom
with a flagon,
Or Karl with a jag on--

Then up and after
The joy
of the night
With the hounds of laughter
To follow the flight
Of
the fox-foot hours
That double and run
Through brakes and bowers

Of folly and fun.
With the comrade heart
For a moment's play,
And the comrade
heart
For a heavier day,
And the comrade heart
Forever and aye.
For the joy of wine
Is not for long;
And the joy of song
Is a dream
of shine;
But the comrade heart
Shall outlast art
And a woman's
love
The fame thereof.
But wine for a sign
Of the love we bring!
And song for an oath


That Love is king!
And both, and both
For his worshipping!
Then up and away
Till the break of day,
With a heart that's merry,

And a Tom-and-Jerry,
And a derry-down-derry--
What's that you
say.
You highly respectable
Buyers and sellers?
We should be
decenter?
Not as we please inter
Custom, frugality,
Use and
morality
In the delectable
Depths of wine-cellars?
Midnights of revel,
And noondays of song!
Is it so wrong?
Go to
the Devil!
I tell you that we,
While you are smirking
And lying and shirking

life's duty of duties,
Honest sincerity,
We are in verity
Free!

Free to rejoice
In blisses and beauties!
Free as the voice
Of the
wind as it passes!
Free as the bird
In the weft of the grasses!
Free
as the word
Of the sun to the sea--
Free!
A WAIF.
Do you know what it is to be vagrant born?
A waif is only a waif.
And so,
For another idle hour I sit,
In large content while the fire
burns low.
I gossip here to my crony heart
Of the day just over, and count it one

Of the royal elemental days,
Though its dreams were few and its
deeds were none.
Outside, the winter; inside, the warmth
And a sweet oblivion of
turmoil. Why?
All for a gentle girlish hand

With its warm and
lingering good-bye.
THE JOYS OF THE ROAD.
Now the joys of the road are chiefly these:
A crimson touch on the
hard-wood trees;

A vagrant's morning wide and blue,
In early fall when the wind walks,
too;
A shadowy highway cool and brown,
Alluring up and enticing down
From rippled water to dappled swamp,
From purple glory to scarlet
pomp;
The outward eye, the quiet will,
And the striding heart from hill to
hill;
The tempter apple over the fence;
The cobweb bloom on the yellow
quince;
The palish asters along the wood,--
A lyric touch of the