Songs from Vagabondia | Page 5

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 sobbing!
A HILL SONG.
Hills where once my love and I?Let the hours go laughing by!?All your woods and dales are sad,--?You have lost your Oread.?Falling leaves! Silent woodlands!?Half your loveliness is fled.?Golden-rod, wither now!?Winter winds, come hither now!?All the summer joy is dead.
There's a sense of something gone?In the grass I linger on.?There's an under-voice that grieves?In the rustling of the leaves.?Pine-clad peaks! Rushing waters!?Glens where we were once so glad!?There's a light passed from you,?There's a joy outcast from you,--?You have lost your Oread.
AT SEA.
As a brave man faces the foe,?Alone against hundreds, and sees Death grin in his teeth,?But, shutting his lips, fights on to the end?Without speech, without hope, without flinching,--?So, silently, grimly, the steamer?Lurches ahead through the night.
A beacon-light far off,?Twinkling across the waves like a star!?But no star in the dark overhead!?The splash of waters at the prow, and the evil light?Of the death-fires flitting like will-o'-the-wisps beneath! And