Songs from Vagabondia | Page 2

solitude;
An open hand, an easy shoe.
And a hope to make the day go
through,--
Another to sleep with, and a third
To wake me up at the voice of a
bird;
The resonant far-listening morn,
And the hoarse whisper of the corn;
The crickets mourning their comrades lost,
In the night's retreat from
the gathering frost;
(Or is it their slogan, plaintive and shrill,
As they beat on their
corselets, valiant still?)
A hunger fit for the kings of the sea,
And a loaf of bread for Dickon
and me;
A thirst like that of the Thirsty Sword,
And a jug of cider on the
board;
An idle noon, a bubbling spring,
The sea in the pine-tops murmuring;

A scrap of gossip at the ferry;
A comrade neither glum nor merry,
Asking nothing, revealing naught,
But minting his words from a fund
of thought,
A keeper of silence eloquent,
Needy, yet royally well content,
Of the mettled breed, yet abhorring strife,
And full of the mellow
juice of life;
A taster of wine, with an eye for a maid,
Never too bold, and never
afraid,
Never heart-whole, never heart-sick,
(These are the things I worship
in Dick)
No fidget and no reformer, just
A calm observer of ought and must,
A lover of books, but a reader of man,
No cynic and no charlatan,
Who never defers and never demands,
But, smiling, takes the world
in his hands,--
Seeing it good as when God first saw
And gave it the weight of his
will for law.
And O the joy that is never won,
But follows and follows the
journeying sun,
By marsh and tide, by meadow and stream,
A will-o'-the-wind, a
light-o'-dream,
Delusion afar, delight anear,
From morrow to morrow, from year to
year,
A jack-o'-lantern, a fairy fire,
A dare, a bliss, and a desire!

The racy smell of the forest loam,
When the stealthy, sad-heart leaves
go home;
(O leaves, O leaves, I am one with you,
Of the mould and the sun and
the wind and the dew!)
The broad gold wake of the afternoon;
The silent fleck of the cold
new moon;
The sound of the hollow sea's release
From stormy tumult to starry
peace;
With only another league to wend;
And two brown arms at the
journey's end!
These are the joys of the open road--
For him who travels without a
load.
EVENING ON THE POTOMAC.
The fervid breath of our flushed Southern May
Is sweet upon the
city's throat and lips,
As a lover's whose tired arm slips
Listlessly
over the shoulder of a queen.
Far away
The river melts in the unseen.
Oh, beautiful Girl-City,
how she dips
Her feet in the stream
With a touch that is half a kiss
and half a dream!
Her face is very fair,
With flowers for smiles and
sunlight in her hair.
My westland flower-town, how serene she is!
Here on this hill from
which I look at her,
All is still as if a worshipper
Left at some
shrine his offering.
Soft winds kiss
My cheek with a slow lingering.
A luring whisper
where the laurels stir
Wiles my heart back to woodland-ward again.

But lo,
Across the sky the sunset couriers run,
And I remain
To
watch the imperial pageant of the Sun
Mock me, an impotent Cortez
here below,
With splendors of its vaster Mexico.
O Eldorado of the templed clouds!
O golden city of the western sky!

Not like the Spaniard would I storm thy gates;
Not like the babe
stretch chubby hands and cry
To have thee for a toy; but far from crowds,
Like my Faun brother in
the ferny glen,
Peer from the wood's edge while thy glory waits,

And in the darkening thickets plunge again.
SPRING SONG.
Make me over, mother April,
When the sap begins to stir!
When
thy flowery hand delivers
All the mountain-prisoned rivers,
And
thy great heart beats and quivers,
To revive the days that were,

Make me over, mother April,
When the sap begins to stir!
Take my dust and all my dreaming,
Count my heart-beats one by one,

Send them where the winters perish;
Then some golden noon
recherish
And restore them in the sun,
Flower and scent and dust
and dreaming,
With their heart-beats every one!
Set me in the urge and tide-drift
Of the streaming hosts a-wing!

Breast of scarlet, throat of yellow,
Raucous challenge, wooings
mellow--
Every migrant is my fellow,
Making northward with the
spring.
Loose me in the urge and tide-drift
Of the streaming hosts
a-wing!
Shrilling pipe or fluting whistle,
In the valleys come again;
Fife of
frog and call of tree-toad,
All my brothers, five or three-toed,
With
their revel no more vetoed,
Making music in the rain;
Shrilling pipe
or fluting whistle,
In the valleys come again.

Make me of thy seed to-morrow,
When the sap begins to stir!

Tawny light-foot, sleepy bruin,
Bright-eyes in the orchard ruin,

Gnarl the good life goes askew in,
Whiskey-jack, or tanager,--

Make me anything to-morrow,
When the sap begins to stir!
Make me even (How do I know?)
Like my friend the gargoyle there;

It may be the heart within him
Swells that doltish hands should pin
him
Fixed forever in mid-air.
Make me even sport for swallows,

Like the soaring gargoyle there!
Give me the old clue to follow,
Through the