Songs from Vagabondia | Page 3

labyrinth of night!

Clod of clay with heart of fire,
Things that burrow and aspire,
With
the vanishing desire,
For the perishing delight,--
Only the old clue
to follow,
Through the labyrinth of night!
Make me over, mother April,
When the sap begins to stir!
Fashion
me from swamp or meadow,
Garden plot or ferny shadow,

Hyacinth or humble burr!
Make me over, mother April,
When the
sap begins to stir!
Let me hear the far, low summons,
When the silver winds return;

Rills that run and streams that stammer,
Goldenwing with his loud
hammer,
Icy brooks that brawl and clamor,
Where the Indian
willows burn;
Let me hearken to the calling,
When the silver winds
return,
Till recurring and recurring,
Long since wandered and come back,

Like a whim of Grieg's or Gounod's,
This same self, bird, bud, or
Bluenose,
Some day I may capture (Who knows?)
Just the one last
joy I lack,
Waking to the far new summons,
When the old spring
winds come back.
For I have no choice of being,
When the sap begins to climb,--

Strong insistence, sweet intrusion,
Vasts and verges of illusion,--
So
I win, to time's confusion,
The one perfect pearl of time,
Joy and

joy and joy forever,
Till the sap forgets to climb!
Make me over in the morning
From the rag-bag of the world!

Scraps of dream and duds of daring,
Home-brought stuff from far
sea-faring,
Faded colors once so flaring,
Shreds of banners long
since furled!
Hues of ash and glints of glory,
In the rag-bag of the
world!
Let me taste the old immortal
Indolence of life once more;
Not
recalling nor foreseeing,
Let the great slow joys of being
Well my
heart through as of yore!
Let me taste the old immortal
Indolence of
life once more!
Give me the old drink for rapture,
The delirium to drain,
All my
fellows drank in plenty
At the Three Score Inns and Twenty
From
the mountains to the main!
Give me the old drink for rapture,
The
delirium to drain!
Only make me over, April,
When the sap begins to stir!
Make me
man or make me woman,
Make me oaf or ape or human,
Cup of
flower or cone of fir;
Make me anything but neuter
When the sap
begins to stir!
THE FAUN. A FRAGMENT.
I will go out to grass with that old King,
For I am weary of clothes
and cooks.
I long to lie along the banks of brooks,
And watch the
boughs above me sway and swing.
Come, I will pluck off custom's
livery,
Nor longer be a lackey to old Time.
Time shall serve me,
and at my feet shall fling
The spoil of listless minutes. I shall climb

The wild trees for my food, and run
Through dale and upland as a fox
runs free,
Laugh for cool joy and sleep i' the warm sun,
And men
will call me mad, like that old King.
For I am woodland-natured, and have made

Dryads my bedfellows,


And I have played
With the sleek Naiads in the splash of pools
And
made a mock of gowned and trousered fools.
Helen, none knows

Better than thou how like a Faun I strayed.
And I am half Faun now,
and my heart goes
Out to the forest and the crack of twigs,
The drip
of wet leaves and the low soft laughter
Of brooks that chuckle o'er
old mossy jests
And say them over to themselves, the nests
Of
squirrels and the holes the chipmunk digs,
Where through the
branches the slant rays
Dapple with sunlight the leaf-matted ground,

And the wind comes with blown vesture rustling after,
And
through the woven lattice of crisp sound
A bird's song lightens like a
maiden's face.
O wildwood Helen, let them strive and fret,
Those goggled men with
their dissecting-knives!
Let them in charnel-houses pass their lives
And seek in death life's
secret! And let
Those hard-faced worldlings prematurely old
Gnaw
their thin lips with vain desire to get
Portia's fair fame or Lesbia's
carcanet,
Or crown of Caesar or Catullus,
Apicius' lampreys or
Crassus' gold!
For these consider many things--but yet
By land nor
sea
They shall not find the way to Arcady,
The old home of the
awful heart-dear Mother,
Whereto child-dreams and long
rememberings lull us,
Far from the cares that overlay and smother

The memories of old woodland out-door mirth
In the dim first
life-burst centuries ago,
The sense of the freedom and nearness of
Earth--
Nay, this they shall not know;
For who goes thither,

Leaves all the cark and clutch of his soul behind,
The doves defiled
and the serpents shrined,
The hates that wax and the hopes that wither;

Nor does he journey, seeking where it be,
But wakes and finds
himself in Arcady.
Hist! there's a stir in the brush.

Was it a face through the leaves?

Back of the laurels a skurry and rush
Hillward, then silence except for
the thrush
That throws one song from the dark of the bush
And is

gone; and I plunge in the wood, and the swift soul cleaves Through the
swirl and the flow of the leaves,
As a swimmer stands with his white
limbs bare to the sun
For the space that a breath is held, and drops in
the sea;
And the undulant woodland folds round me, intimate,
fluctuant, free, Like the clasp and the cling of waters,
and the reach and the effort is done,--
There