Songs from Vagabondia | Page 5

of the sameness grim,
You are new, new, new--new through
and through,
And strange as a lawless dream.
Will the driftwood float by the lonely boat
And our prisoner hearts
unbar,
As it tells of the strand of an unseen land
That lies not far,
not far?
O new, new hope! O sweep and scope

Of the glad, unlying
sea!
You are new, new, new--with the promise true
Of the
dreamland isles to be.

Will the land-birds fly across the sky,
Though the land is not to see?

Have they dipped and passed in the sea-line vast?
Have we left the
land a-lee?
O new despair! I though the hopeless air
Grow foul with
the calm and grieves,
You are new, new, new--and we cleave to you

As a soul to its freedom cleaves.
Does the falling night hide fiends to fight
And phantoms to affray?

What demons lurk in the grisly mirk,
As the night-watch waits for
day?
O strange new gloom! we await the doom,
And what doom
none may deem;
But it's new, new, new--and we'll sail it through,

While the mocking sea-gulls scream.
A light, a light, in the dead of night,
That lifts and sinks in the waves!

What folk are they who have kindled its ray,--
Men or the ghouls
of graves?
O new, new fear! near, near and near,
And you bear us
weal or woe!
But you're new, new, new--so a cheer for you!
And
onward--friend or foe!
Shall the lookout call from the foretop tall,
"Land, land!" with a
maddened scream,
And the crew in glee from the taffrail see
Where
the island palm-trees dream?
New heart, new eyes! For the morning
skies
Are a-chant with their green and gold!
New, new, new,
new--new through and through!
New, new till the dawn is old!
A MORE ANCIENT MARINER.
The swarthy bee is a buccaneer,
A burly velveted rover,
Who loves
the booming wind in his ear
As he sails the seas of clover.
A waif of the goblin pirate crew,
With not a soul to deplore him,
He
steers for the open verge of blue
With the filmy world before him.
His flimsy sails abroad on the wind
Are shivered with fairy thunder;

On a line that sings to the light of his wings
He makes for the lands
of wonder.

He harries the ports of the Hollyhocks,
And levies on poor Sweetbrier;

He drinks the whitest wine of Phlox,
And the Rose is his desire.
He hangs in the Willows a night and a day;
He rifles the Buckwheat
patches;
Then battens his store of pelf galore
Under the tautest
hatches.
He woos the Poppy and weds the Peach,
Inveigles Daffodilly,
And
then like a tramp abandons each
For the gorgeous Canada Lily.
There's not a soul in the garden world
But wishes the day were
shorter,
When Mariner B. puts out to sea
With the wind in the
proper quarter.
Or, so they say! But I have my doubts;
For the flowers are only
human,
And the valor and gold of a vagrant bold
Were always dear
to woman.
He dares to boast, along the coast,
The beauty of Highland Heather,--

How he and she, with night on the sea,
Lay out on the hills
together.
He pilfers from every port of the wind,
From April to golden autumn;

But the thieving ways of his mortal days
Are those his mother
taught him.
His morals are mixed, but his will is fixed;
He prospers after his kind,

And follows an instinct, compass-sure,
The philosophers call blind.
And that is why, when he comes to die,
He'll have an easier sentence

Than some one I know who thinks just so,
And then leaves room
for repentance.
He never could box the compass round;
He doesn't know port from
starboard;
But he knows the gates of the Sundown Straits,
Where
the choicest goods are harbored.

He never could see the Rule of Three,
But he knows a rule of thumb

Better than Euclid's, better than yours,
Or the teachers' yet to come.
He knows the smell of the hydromel
As if two and two were five;

And hides it away for a year and a day
In his own hexagonal hive.
Out in the day, hap-hazard, alone,
Booms the old vagrant hummer,

With only his whim to pilot him
Through the splendid vast of
summer.
He steers and steers on the slant of the gale,
Like the fiend or
Vanderdecken;
And there's never an unknown course to sail
But his
crazy log can reckon.
He drones along with his rough sea-song
And the throat of a salty tar,

This devil-may-care, till he makes his lair
By the light of a yellow
star.
He looks like a gentleman, lives like a lord,
And works like a Trojan
hero;
Then loafs all winter upon his hoard,
With the mercury at
zero.
A SONG BY THE SHORE.
"Lose and love" is love's first art;
So it was with thee and me,
For I
first beheld thy heart
On the night I last saw thee.
Pine-woods and
mysteries!
Sea-sands and sorrows!
Hearts fluttered by a breeze

That bodes dark morrows, morrows,--
Bodes dark morrows!
Moonlight in sweet overflow
Poured upon the earth and sea!

Lovelight with intenser glow
In the deeps of thee and me!
Clasped
hands and silences!
Hearts faint and throbbing!
The weak wind
sighing in the trees!
The strong surf sobbing, sobbing,--
The strong
surf