Songs from Vagabondia | Page 4

is only the glory of living,
exultant to be.
O goodly damp smell of the ground!
O rough sweet bark of the trees!

O clear sharp cracklings of sound!
O life that's a-thrill and a-bound

With the vigor of boyhood and morning, and the noontide's rapture
of ease! Was there ever a weary heart in the world?
A lag in the
body's urge or a flag of the spirit's wings?
Did a man's heart ever
break
For a lost hope's sake?
For here there is lilt in the quiet and
calm in the quiver of things. Ay, this old oak, gray-grown and knurled,

Solemn and sturdy and big,
Is as young of heart, as alert and elate
in his rest,
As the nuthatch there that clings to the tip of the twig

And scolds at the wind that it buffets too rudely its nest.
Oh, what is it breathes in the air?
Oh, what is it touches my cheek?

There's a sense of a presence that lurks in the branches.
But where?

Is it far, is it far to seek?
A ROVER'S SONG.
Snowdrift of the mountains,
Spindrift of the sea,
We who down the
border
Rove from gloom to glee,--
Snowdrift of the mountains,
Spindrift of the sea,
There be no such
gypsies
Over earth as we.
Snowdrift of the mountains,
Spindrift of the sea,
Let us part the
treasure
Of the world in three.

Snowdrift of the mountains,
Spindrift of the sea,
You shall keep
your kingdoms;
Joscelyn for me!
DOWN THE SONGO.
I.
Floating!
Floating--and all the stillness waits
And listens at the
ivory gates,
Full of a dim uncertain presage
Of some strange,
undelivered message.
There is no sound save from the bush
The
alto of the shy wood-thrush,
And ever and anon the dip
Of a lazy
oar.
The rhythmic drowsiness keeps time
To hazy subtleties of rhyme

That seem to slip
Through the lulled soul to seek the sleepy shore.

The idle clouds go floating by;
Above us sky, beneath us sky;
The
sun shines on us as we lie
Floating.
It is a dream.
It is a dream, my love; see how
The ripples quiver at
the prow,
And all the long reflections shake
Unsteadily beneath the
lake.
The mists about the uplands show
Dim violet towers that
come and go.
Phantasmagoric palaces
Rise trembling there,
As
though one breath of waking weather
Would crash their airy walls
together
With sudden stress,
While silent detonations shook the
air--
Vast fabrics toppling to the ground
And vanishing without a
sound.
Ah, love, these are not what we deem;
It is a dream.
II.
Let us dream on, then,----dream and die
Ere the dream pass.
Let us
for once, like idle flowers,
Let slip the unregarded hours,
Like the
wise flowers that lie

Unfretted by a feeble thought,
Future and past
alike forgot,
Drinking the dew contentedly
In the cool grass.
III.

Look yonder where the clouds float; could we glide
As they, across
the sky's blue shoreless tide,
What better were it than to dream

Across yon lake and into this still stream?
IV.
Trees and a glimpse of sky!
And the slow river, quiet as a pool!

And thou and I--and thou and I--
Kiss me! How soft the air is and
how cool!
THE WANDER-LOVERS.
Down the world with Marna!
That's the life for me!
Wandering
with the wandering wind,
Vagabond and unconfined!
Roving with
the roving rain
Its unboundaried domain!
Kith and kin of
wander-kind,
Children of the sea!
Petrels of the sea-drift!
Swallows of the lea!
Arabs of the whole
wide girth
Of the wind-encircled earth!
In all climes we pitch our
tents,
Cronies of the elements,
With the secret lords of birth

Intimate and free.
All the seaboard knows us
From Fundy to the Keys;
Every bend
and every creek
Of abundant Chesapeake;
Ardise hills and Newport
coves
And the far-off orange groves,
Where Floridian oceans break,

Tropic tiger seas.
Down the world with Marna,
Tarrying there and here!
Just as much
at home in Spain
As in Tangier or Touraine!
Shakespeare's Avon
knows us well,
And the crags of Neufchâtel;
And the ancient Nile is
fain
Of our coming near.
Down the world with Marna,
Daughter of the air!
Marna of the
subtle grace,
And the vision in her face!
Moving in the measures
trod

By the angels before God!
With her sky-blue eyes amaze


And her sea-blue hair!
Marna with the trees' life
In her veins a-stir!
Marna of the aspen
heart
Where the sudden quivers start!
Quick-responsive, subtle,
wild!
Artless as an artless child,
Spite of all her reach of art!
Oh,
to roam with her!
Marna with the wind's will,
Daughter of the sea!
Marna of the quick
disdain,
Starting at the dream of stain!
At a smile with love aglow,

At a frown a statued woe,
Standing pinnacled in pain
Till a kiss
sets free!
Down the world with Marna,
Daughter of the fire!
Marna of the
deathless hope,
Still alert to win new scope
Where the wings of life
may spread
For a flight unhazarded!
Dreaming of the speech to
cope
With the heart's desire!
Marna of the far quest
After the divine!
Striving ever for some goal

Past the blunder-god's control!
Dreaming of potential years

When no day shall dawn in fears!
That's the Marna of my soul,

Wander-bride of mine!
DISCOVERY.
When the bugler morn shall wind his horn,
And we wake to the wild
to be,
Shall we open our eyes on the selfsame skies
And stare at the
selfsame sea?
O new, new day! though you bring no stay
To the
strain