Songs from Vagabondia

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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
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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 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