*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78129 ***
THE
NATURE LOVER’S
KNAPSACK
POCKET SIZE BOOKS OF VALUE
EMERSON’S ESSAYS.
ByRalph Waldo Emerson.
“First Series” and “Second Series”
complete in one volume.
THE RING AND THE BOOK.
ByRobert Browning.
Walter Hampden Edition. With introduction
by Montrose J. Moses, and
notes by Charlotte Porter and Helen
A Clarke.
OPERA SYNOPSES.
ByJ. Walker McSpadden.
Fourth Edition. Revised and enlarged.
Over one hundred and fifty operas.
NATURE LOVER’S KNAPSACK.
ByEdwin Osgood Grover.
A delightful collection of out-door
poems by over one hundred different
authors.
THOMAS Y. CROWELL COMPANY PublishersNew York
THE
NATURE LOVER’S
KNAPSACK
AN ANTHOLOGY OF POEMS FOR
LOVERS OF THE OPEN ROAD
Edited by
EDWIN OSGOOD GROVER Professor of Books, Rollins College
NEW YORK
THOMAS Y. CROWELL COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
Copyright, 1927 By Thomas Y. Crowell Company
Third Printing
MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
BY THE VAIL-BALLOU PRESS, INC., BINGHAMTON, N. Y.
To
M. L. G.
Who has shared with me the Joys of “Knapsack Carrying” along Life’s road
vii
On Knapsack Carrying
We are all knapsack carriers. And none of us travels
far on the road of Life without discovering certain
things which we would not be without,—things that
seem indispensable to our happiness. These indispensable
things we put, often unconsciously, into our knapsack to
carry with us during the remainder of the journey.
The kinds of things we “tote” in our knapsack vary with
the different stages of our journey. We begin by collecting
pebbles for our sling shot, and in lieu of a literal knapsack
we hide them in our boy’s pocket. A little farther along the
journey we discover that marbles, or stamps, or arrowheads
are the things that are indispensable to our happiness, and
we gradually shift our knapsack load to meet the newer need.
Still later in life some of us accumulate coins and bank
notes, stocks and mortgages, and other passing trifles that
for the moment seem the only indispensable things to our
happiness. We work ourselves sick, we sacrifice our friends,
we succeed so well that soon our knapsack is too full for us
to carry, and we go to some friendly banker and ask him to
put it in his safety deposit vault where we may worry about
it to our hearts’ content. And there it rests until we come to
die, and the only joy it has brought us is the cheap joy of
accumulation.
Some of us, however, by force of circumstance or by deliberate
choice, begin early in life to collect in our knapsacks
beautiful memories of sunsets, of cloud-capped hills
and wind-swept plains, of deep-flowing rivers and talking
brooks, memories of the infinite sky and the eternal sea, of
bird songs and blossoms, of trembling trees and all the lovely
things of nature. And after the first ecstasy of discovery,
these things gradually become the indispensable things of our
happiness and of our lives. Every spring these joys are reborn
in us, and every autumn they flare up with the first
[Pg viii]reddening tree. Each month in the cycle of the year holds
its unforgettable thrill, its reminder of ancient glories and
happy memories.
Next to the recollection of beauties we have seen with our
own eyes and carried long in the knapsack of our memory,
there is no joy greater than walking afield with the poets,
and spending an afternoon discovering new beauties and
new meanings in Nature.
Soon or late every nature lover makes a collection of
those poems that remind him of his own memories. These
he treasures in his knapsack, and as the seasons come and
go he takes them out to feed his soul and to refresh his
spirit as he travels hopefully along the road of Life.
I would not for the world deprive any one of this pleasure.
I only hope that this knapsack of nature poetry will
be found a worthy travelling companion for every nature
lover. It cannot be exhaustive, and it is in no sense a reference
book. Its only purpose is to serve as a friendly guide
to many of the most beautiful nature poems by English and
American authors. They lead one over an unknown trail
with here a glimpse of sea, there a racing cloud, now the
patter of April rain, and the smell of apple blossoms. Open
the book where you will, and it leads you off through field
or forest, by babbling brook or singing sea.
An anthology necessarily implies an individual choice, and
the selections within have been chosen almost without exception
for the pleasure they have given me. Because I believe
that Lyric poetry is the highest form of poetic expression,
I have given the preference to poems that possess this singing
quality.
In spite of the fact that in much of the poetry of the
last twenty-five years the lyric note has been sadly absent,
yet the book contains many exquisite lyrics by the “younger
generation” which shows the persistence of this timeless
quality of all great poetry.
[Pg ix]
I wish to acknowledge frankly my indebtedness to many
who have preceded me in the making of anthologies; and to
scores of authors and their publishers who have so generously
given permission for me to include their poems. It is
a goodly fellowship. If, after all, I have left out your favorite
nature poem, please tell me so.
The editor expresses his keen appreciation to the many poets and
their publishers, who have so generously coöperated in the preparation
of this volume by granting permission to include copyright
material.
All rights to the poems are reserved by the legal holders of the
copyrights.
To D. Appleton & Company for “Spring on the Off-Trail,” from
Songs of the Stalwart, by Grantland Rice.
To The Atlantic Monthly, for “Hill Hunger,” and “A Blackbird
Suddenly,” by Joseph Auslander.
To Richard A. Badger for “Traveller’s Joy,” “The Sea Wind,”
“Countersign,” by Arthur Ketchum.
To Barse & Hopkins for “The Call of the Wild,” by Robert
Service.
To Alfred Bartlett, for “September,” “The Gipsy Wedding,”
“Gipsy Song,” “Upon Us Vagabonds,” “Song of the Open,” “The
Sojourner,” “A la Belle Étoile,” “A Conversation,” “Lavender for
Old Loves,” by Sara Hamilton Birchall.
To Ernest Benn, Limited, (London), for “The Blackbird,” “The
Lilac,” by Humbert Wolfe.
To Brentano’s, Inc., for “Behind the Closed Eye,” “Farewell,”
“The Winds of Life,” “Blind,” “Tell All the World,” “The Going
of His Feet,” by Harry Kemp.
To Jonathan Cape, Limited, (London) for “Happy Wind,”
“Dreams of the Sea,” by W. H. Davies.
To The Century Company, for “The Immortal,” “As the Tide
Comes in,” “The Runaway,” by Cale Young Rice.
To Christian Endeavor World for “Changeless,” by Martha
Haskell Clark.
To The Churchman, for “Traveller’s Joy,” and “Sea Wind,” by
Arthur Ketchum.
To Cincinnati Times-Star, for “April Morning,” by George
Elliston.
To Contemporary Verse, for “Wasted Hours,” by Medora
Addison; “Walking at Night,” by Amory Hare; “Rain,” by Kenneth
Slade Alling; “Sea Longing,” by Harold Vinal; “Two Old Men,”
by Louise Driscoll.
To the Cornhill Publishing Company, for “The House of the
Trees,” by Ethelwyn Wetherald.
To Country Life (London) for “Dawn,” by Isabel Butchart.
To Dodd, Mead & Company, for “The Sea,” by Nora Hopper;
“I Meant to Do My Work Today,” by Richard Le Gallienne;
“Walking at Night,” by Amory Hare.
To George H. Doran Company, for “Traveller’s Rest,” from
Sailor Town by C. Fox-Smith, copyright 1919, by George Doran
Company, publishers; “Carouse,” “The Best Road of All,” “Renewal,”
[Pg xx]from World of Windows by Charles Hanson Towne.
To Dorrance & Company for “Deep-Water Men,” “Deep Down,”
from Songs of Men, by James Stuart Montgomery.
To E. P. Dutton & Company for “The Dandelions,” by Helen
Gray Cone; “The Naturalist on a June Sunday,” “ABC’s in
Green,” by Leonora Speyer.
To Federal National Bank, Boston, for “The Cry of the
Dreamer,” by John Boyle O’Reilly.
To Forbes & Company for “Far From the Madding Crowd,” by
Nixon Waterman.
To Good Housekeeping for “The Sea Road,” and “Sea Song,” by
Martha Haskell Clark.
To Harcourt, Brace & Company, Inc. for “Sea Call” from Cross
Currents by Margaret Widdemer, copyright 1921, by Harcourt,
Brace & Company, Inc.
To Harper Bros. for “Afternoon on a Hill,” “God’s World,”
“Journey,” by Edna St. Vincent Millay.
To Hodder & Stoughton, Limited, (London), for “Credo,” by
Vera Wheatley.
To Henry Holt & Company for “Wind Litany,” by Margaret
Widdemer; “God Is At His Anvil,” by Lew Sarett; “The Whole
Duty of Berkshire Brooks,” “After Sunset,” by Grace Hazard Conkling.
To Houghton Mifflin Company for “A Strip of Blue” and “Is
It Raining, Little Flower,” by Lucy Larcom; “The Singer’s Quest”
by Odell Shepard; “Rhodora,” “Flower Chairs,” “Let Me Go
Where’er I Will,” by Ralph Waldo Emerson.
To B. W. Huebsch, Inc., for “On the Hill,” by Irene Rutherford
McLeod.
To Mitchell Kennerly for “The Wanderer,” by Zoe Atkins.
To Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. for “Little Things,” by Orrick Johns;
“The Early Gods,” by Witter Bynner.
To J. L. Lippincott Company, for “April Rain,” by Robert
Loveman.
To Little, Brown & Company, for “Autumn,” “The Robin,”
“April,” “Indian Summer,” by Emily Dickinson.
To Longmans, Green & Co. (London) for “A Word With a
Skylark,” by Sarah Piatt.
To Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co. for “May-Lure,” “Dumb in June,”
“Comfort of the Stars,” and “Song of the Sea,” by Richard Burton.
To The Lyric West for “The Coming of Dawn,” by Grace C.
Dennen.
To The Macmillan Company for “Grace for Gardens,” by
Louise Driscoll; “Sea-Fever,” “A Wanderer’s Song,” by John Masefield;
“Up a Hill and a Hill,” “Gipsy Feet,” by Fannie Stearns
Davis; “The Sweet, Low Speech of the Rain,” by Ella Higginson.
To Macmillan & Co. Ltd. (London) for “My Garden,” by T. E.
Brown.
[Pg xxi]
To McClelland & Stewart, Toronto, Limited, for “Wanderlust,”
by Isabel Mackay.
To Thomas B. Mosher for “Birds of the Air They Sing it,” and
“The Charm is Working Now,” by John Vance Cheney, “The
Undersong,” by Fiona Macleod, “The Lark” and “April Weather,”
by Lizette Woodworth Reese.
To L. C. Page & Company for “Gray Rocks and Grayer Sea,”
“Afoot,” by Charles G. D. Roberts.
To Poetry for “Early Morn at Barges,” by Hermann Hagedorn;
“Ellis Park,” by Helen Hoyt.
To G. P. Putnam’s Sons, for “The Country Faith,” “Spring,”
“All the Lanes are Lyric,” from The Country Muse by Norman
Gale; “April,” “The Gipsying,” “The Green Inn,” “A Song of
Autumn,” “A City Voice,” “The Poplars,” “The Hills,” “A Morning,”
by Theodosia Garrison.
To Reilly & Lee Co., for “The Call,” “God Made This Day For
Me,” “Fishing,” “City Weary,” “The Vagabond,” by Edgar A.
Guest.
To The Roycroft Magazine for “The Road that Leads to Home,”
by Ethel E. Mannin.
To Charles Scribner’s Sons for “The Road That Leads to Nowhere,”
by Corrinne Roosevelt Robinson; “Homesick,” by Julia
C. R. Dorr; “The Wind,” by John Galsworthy; “The Trees and
the Master” and “Marshes of Glynn” (Extract), by Sidney Lanier;
“Trees,” “Of All the Skies,” by Henry van Dyke.
To Sidgwick & Jackson, Ltd. (London), for “Farewell,” “The
Turn of the Year,” and “The Epitaph,” by Katherine Tynan;
“Wanderthirst,” by Gerald Gould.
To Small, Maynard & Co., for “The Whisper of Earth,” by
Edward J. O’Brien; “Clover,” by John B. Tabb; “Camping Song,”
“Trees,” “April Weather,” “An Autumn Garden,” “The Cry of
the Hillborn,” “Daisies,” “The Joys of the Road,” “A Vagabond’s
Song,” “Spring Song,” “Marigolds,” “A More Ancient Mariner,”
“The Mendicants,” “A Song of the Sea,” “St. Bartholomew’s on
the Hill,” “The Deserted Pasture,” by Bliss Carman; “Comrades”
(Extracts), “Spring” (Extracts), “The Faun,” “Short Beach,”
“Hunting Song,” “Seaward” (Extracts), by Richard Hovey.
To the Boston Evening Transcript for “Prayer Before Poems,”
by Anne Blackwell Payne.
To The Christian Century for “Spring’s Answer,” by Edwin
Osgood Grover.
To Country Life in America for “Down East and Up Along,”
by Edwin Osgood Grover.
To The Chicago Tribune for “Sea Magic.”
To Yale University Press, for “Overtones,” from In April Once,
by William Alexander Percy; and “Good Company,” from Blue
Smoke by Karle Wilson Baker.
To Jonathan Cape, Ltd. for “Happy Wind” and “Dreams of
the Sea,” by W. H. Davies.
[Pg xxii]
The following individuals have also given their permission for
the use of copyright material, and the editor’s thanks are due them
personally.
To Joseph Auslander for “Hill-Hunger,” “A Blackbird Suddenly.”
To Kendall Banning for “Wander-Lure.”
To Katherine Lee Bates for “Gipsy-Heart.”
To C. G. Blanden for “A Song the Grass Sings.”
To William Stanley Braithwaite for “Sic Vita” from The House
Of Falling Leaves.
To Dana Burnet for “The Road to Vagabondia.”
To Richard Burton for “May-Lure,” “Dumb in June,” (Extracts)
“Comfort of the Stars,” “Song of the Sea.”
To Witter Bynner for “The Early Gods” and “A Phœbe Bird.”
To Stephen Chalmers for “The Tree-Top Road.”
To Eugene F. Clark for “The Sea Road,” “Changeless,” “Black
Ashes,” “Sea Song,” by Martha Haskell Clark.
To Mary Carolyn Davies for “Comrades of the Trail.”
To Babette Deutsch for “The Hound.”
To Louise Driscoll, for “The Spring Market” and “Two Old
Men.”
To Ella Elizabeth Egbert for “Days Like These.”
To George Elliston for “April Morning.”
To Jeanne Robert Foster for “Song of Ballyshannon.”
To Hamlin Garland for “The Toil of the Trail,” “Do You Fear
the Wind?”
To Charlotte Perkins Gilman for “Tree-Feelings.”
To Eva Gore-Booth, “The Perilous Light,” from manuscript;
“The Waves of Breffny.”
To Gerald Gould for “Wanderthirst.”
To Arthur Guiterman for “The Hills” from The Mirthful Lyre.
To Hermann Hagedorn, for “Early Morning at Bargis.”
To Ella Higginson for “The Sweet Low Speech of the Rain.”
To Julian Hovey for “Seaward,” (Extracts) by Richard Hovey.
To Arthur Ketchum for “The Sea-Wind,” “Traveller’s Joy.”
To Leslie Nelson Jennings for “Highways.”
To Orrick Johns, for “Little Things.”
To Ruth Kauffman for “Vagabond.”
To Theda Kenyon for “In the Garden.”
To Georgiana Goddard King for “Song.”
To Louis Loveman for “April Rain” by Robert Loveman.
To Ethel E. Mannin for “Ship-Love,” “The Road that Leads
to Home,” “The Secret Voices,” “Out-of-Doors.”
To Edwin Markham for “A Prayer.”
To John Steven McGroarty for “The Port o’ Heart’s Desire” and
“The King’s Highway.”
To Edward J. O’Brien for “The Whisper of Earth.”
To Lancaster Pollard for “Denial,” “Morning Song,” “April’s
Coming,” “Clouds and Sky.”
To Lizette Woodworth Reese for “The Lark.”
[Pg xxiii]
To Cole Young Rice for “As the Tide Comes In,” “The Mystic,”
“The Runaway,” “The Immortal.”
To Jessie B. Rittenhouse for “The Green Tree in the Fall.”
To Clinton Scollard for “Streams,” “Sunflowers,” “April Music,”
“Song in March,” “The Trumpet of the Dawn.”
To May Riley Smith for “Sorrow in a Garden,” “The Tree-Top
Road.”
To Leonora Speyer for “A B C’s in Green,” and “The Naturalist
on a June Sunday.”
To W. G. Tinckom-Fernandez for “Road Song,” “The Beloved
Vagabond.”
To Charles Hanson Towne for “Carouse,” “The Best Road of
All,” “Renewal.”
To Katherine Tynan for “Farewell,” “The Turn of the Year”
and “The Epitaph.”
To Vera Wheatley for “Credo.”
To Humbert Wolfe for “The Lilac,” “The Blackbird.”
To William Watson for “April, April.”
[Pg 1]
The Lure of the Road
[Pg 2]
I, too, have heard the insistent call of bird and wind and sun; I, too, have heard the little brooks low calling as they run; I, too, have heard the summons far, of sea gulls in the rain— And lo, my heart is home once more, here on the coast of Maine.
E. O. G.
3
A Wanderer’s Song
Awind’s in the heart of me, a fire’s in my heels,
I am tired of brick and stone and rumbling wagon-wheels;
I hunger for the sea’s edge, the limits of the land,
Where the wild old Atlantic is shouting on the sand.
Oh, I’ll be going, leaving the noises of the street,
To where a lifting foresail-foot is yanking at the sheet;
To a windy, tossing anchorage where yawls and ketches ride,
Oh, I’ll be going, going, until I meet the tide.
And first I’ll hear the sea-wind, the mewing of the gulls,
The clucking, sucking of the sea about the rusty hulls,
The songs at the capstan in the hooker warping out,
And then the heart of me’ll know I’m there or thereabout.
Oh, I’m tired of brick and stone, the heart of me is sick,
For windy green, unquiet sea, the realm of Moby Dick;
And I’ll be going, going, from the roaring of the wheels,
For a wind’s in the heart of me, a fire’s in my heels.
John Masefield
The Singer’s Quest
I’ve been wandering, listening for a song,
Dreaming of a melody, all my life long....
The lilting tune that God sang to rock the tides asleep,
And crooned above the cradled stars before they learned to creep.
Oh, there was laughter in it and many a merry chime,
Before He had turned moralist, grown old before His time,
[Pg 4]
And He was happy, trolling out His great blithe-hearted tune,
Before He slung the little earth beneath the sun and moon.
But I know that somewhere that song is rolling on,
Like flutes along the midnight, like trumpets in the dawn;
It throbs across the sunset and stirs the poplar tree
And rumbles in the long low thunder of the sea.
First-love sang me one note and heart-break taught me two,
A child has told me three notes, and soon I’ll know it through;
And when I stand before the Throne I’ll hum it low and sly,
Watching for a great light of welcome in His eye, ...
“Put a white raiment on him and a harp into his hand,
And golden sandals on his feet and tell the saints to stand
A little farther off unless they wish to hear the truth,
For this blessed lucky sinner is going to sing about my youth!”
Odell Shepard
The Toil of the Trail
What have I gained by the toil of the trail?
I know and know well.
I have found once again the lore I had lost
In the loud city’s hell.
I have broadened my hand to the cinch and the axe,
I have laid my flesh to the rain;
I was hunter and trailer and guide;
I have touched the most primitive wildness again.
[Pg 5]
I have threaded the wild with the stealth of the deer,
No eagle is freer than I;
No mountain can thwart me, no torrent appall,
I defy the stern sky.
So long as I live these joys will remain,
I have touched the most primitive wildness again.
Hamlin Garland
Two Old Men
Sit-by-the-Fire:
Men travel far and far away
To come home on a happy day;
And even they whom the roads call
Who never know a home at all,
They dream, I think, of roads that end
At four walls with a fire and friend!
Foot-loose:
I’ve never seen a hill but I
Have dreamed a hill behind it,
Nor ever watched a falling star
Without the hope I’d find it,
And all the islands of the sea
Have known my name and called to me!
Sit-by-the-Fire:
I have planted apple trees
And eaten at my pleasure,
My house is full of memories
For an old man to treasure.
This I have and that I have,
And you may see them standing,
Silver in the dining room,
An old clock on the landing!
[Pg 6]
Foot-loose:
I have neither house nor tree,
Nor heirs alert and knowing,
The four roads of eternity
Are ways I would be going.
Vagabonding in the skies
I will not ask for Paradise!
Louise Driscoll
The Best Road of All
Ilike a road that leads away to prospects white and fair,
A road that is an ordered road, like a nun’s evening prayer;
But best of all I love a road that leads to God knows where.
You come upon it suddenly—you cannot seek it out;
It’s like a secret still unheard and never noised about;
But when you see it, gone at once is every lurking doubt.
It winds beside some rushing stream where aspens lightly quiver;
It follows many a broken field by many a shining river;
It seems to lead you on and on, forever and forever!
You tramp along its dusty way beneath the shadowy trees,
And hear beside you chattering birds or happy booming bees,
And all around you golden sounds, the green leaves’ litanies.
And here’s a hedge and there’s a cot; and then, strange, sudden turns—
A dip, a rise, a little glimpse where the red sunset burns;
A bit of sky at evening time, the scent of hidden ferns.
[Pg 7]
A winding road, a loitering road, the finger mark of God,
Traced when the Maker of the world leaned over ways untrod.
See! Here He smiled His glowing smile, and lo, the goldenrod!
I like a road that wanders straight; the King’s highway is fair,
And lovely are the sheltered lanes that take you here and there;
But best of all I love a road that leads to God knows where.
Charles Hanson Towne
The Cry of the Dreamer
Iam tired of planning and toiling
In the crowded hives of men,
Heart-weary of building and spoiling,
And spoiling and building again,
And I long for the dear old river,
Where I dreamed my youth away;
For a dreamer lives forever,
And a toiler dies in a day.
I am sick of the showy seeming,
Of life that is half a lie;
Of the faces lined with scheming
In the throng that hurries by;
From the sleepless thought’s endeavor
I would go where the children play;
For a dreamer lives forever,
And a thinker dies in a day.
[Pg 8]
I can feel no pride, but pity,
For the burdens the rich endure;
There is nothing sweet in the city
But the patient lives of the poor.
Oh, the little hands too skillful,
And the child-mind choked with weeds!
The daughter’s heart grown willful
And the father’s heart that bleeds!
No! No! from the streets’ rude bustle,
From trophies of mart and stage,
I would fly to the wood’s low rustle
And the meadows’ kindly page.
Let me dream as of old by the river,
And be loved for my dreams alway;
For a dreamer lives forever,
And a toiler dies in a day.
John Boyle O’Reilly
Highways
Who’s learned the lure of trodden ways,
And walked them up and down,
May love a steeple in a mist,
But cannot love a town.
Who’s worn a bit of purple once
Can never, never lie
All smothered in a little box
When stars are in the sky.
Who’s sipped old port in Venice glass
May thirst for better brew—He’s
[Pg 9]
drunk an amber wine of sun
And wet his mouth with dew!
Who’s ground the grist of trodden ways—
The gray dust and the brown—
May love red tiling two miles off—
But cannot love a town.
Leslie Nelson Jennings
Afoot and Light-Hearted
Afoot and light-hearted, I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me, leading wherever I choose.
Henceforth I ask not good-fortune—I myself am good-fortune;
Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,
Strong and content I travel the open road.
Walt Whitman
The Path that Leads to Nowhere
There’s a path that leads to Nowhere
In a meadow that I know,
Where an inland island rises
And the stream is still and slow;
There it wanders under willows
And beneath the silver green
[Pg 10]
Of the birches’ silent shadows
Where the early violets lean.
Other pathways lead to Somewhere,
But the one I love so well
Had no end and no beginning—
Just the beauty of the dell,
Just the windflowers and the lilies
Yellow striped as adder’s tongue,
Seem to satisfy my pathway
As it winds their sweets among.
There I go to meet the Springtime,
When the meadow is aglow,
Marigolds amid the marshes,—
And the stream is still and slow.—
There I find my fair oasis,
And with care-free feet I tread
For the pathway leads to Nowhere,
And the blue is overhead!
All the ways that lead to Somewhere
Echo with the hurrying feet
Of the Struggling and the Striving,
But the way I find so sweet
Bids me dream and bids me linger,
Joy and Beauty are its goal,—
On the path that leads to Nowhere
I have sometimes found my soul!
Corinne Roosevelt Robinson
City-Weary
Come, let’s get out of here! Out of the din of it,
Out of the bickering, out of the sin of it,
Out of the smoke of it, out of the noise of it,
[Pg 11]
Out of the pitiful, lean, leering joys of it.
Come on, let’s go
To a hilltop I know,
Where the air is washed clean,
And the trees are a-gleam
With the gold of the sun,
And there’s naught to be done
Save to lie there and look
At life’s beauties and dream.
Come, let’s get out of here! Out of the stress of it,
Out of the paint and the powder and dress of it,
Out of the cry at the loss or the gain of it,
Out of the hurt and the grief and the pain of it.
Let’s slip away
To the fields for a day,
Where there is nothing
On counters and shelves,
Nothing to strive for,
To work or contrive for,
Let’s leave the city
And just be ourselves.
Come, let’s get out of here! Out of the crush of it,
Out of the bedlam and out of the rush of it,
Out of the sham of it, out of the heat of it,
Out of the withering, scornful conceit of it.
Come on! Let’s go
Where the clean breezes blow,
Out where the splendors
Are all that they seem;
Let’s merely walk awhile,
Ponder and talk awhile,
Giving our souls
The full sweep of a dream.
Edgar A. Guest
[Pg 12]
The Faun
Iwill go out to grass with that old King,
For I am weary of clothes and cooks.
I long to paddle with the throats of brooks,
To lie down with the clover
Tickling me all over,
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-nurtur’d, 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.
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 th’ 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.
Oh, goodly damp smell of the ground!
Oh, rough sweet bark of the trees!
[Pg 13]
Oh, clear sharp cracklings of sound!
Oh, 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 wing?
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 oriole there that clings to the tip of the twig
And scolds at the wind that it buffets too rudely his nest.
To-day was a sea-gull day, dear heart, to-day was a sea-gull day,
With a touch of wind, and the beat of surf, and the breath of the driven spray
Blue of the sky, and blue of the sea, and the white clouds scudding far,
And my longings swept to the sky-line dim like moths to a candle star.
To-day was a sea-gull day, dear heart, that sparkled with sun-flecked blue,
But it bound my heart with a wave-linked chain and bore it away from you.
It stole it far from my hearth and you, though we two sat side by side,
For my heart it tugged like an anchored ship that strains with the seaward tide.
And when we wandered back home, dear heart, so soberly wandered home,
My eyes were blind with the sun-washed gold, and dim with the lunging foam,
And my heart came swaggering on beside, from the wake of the distant ships,
With the lilt of a deep sea chanty-strain like wine on its reckless lips!
Martha Haskell Clark
Deep Down
The lights are on the harbor,
And the ships at anchor ride—
Blow she high, blow she low, let’er blow!
[Pg 105]
We’re outward bound at dawning
With the turning of the tide,
And Davy Jones is waiting down below,
Old Davy Jones is watching down below, below, below,
Down deep, deep down, down below.
Now, here’s to hearty weather,
And here’s to starry skies—
Up she goes, down she goes, bullies, Oh!
And here’s to all the ladies,
And damn old Davy’s eyes,
Long may we keep him waiting down below!
Old thieving, crimping Davy, down below, below, below,
Down deep, deep down, down below.
At Rio, Hull or Sidney,
I’ll meet you all again,
So here’s good luck, my bullies, ere we go,
Or I’ll find a berth ’longside you
In the port o’ missing men,
Where Davy Jones is waiting down below,
Where Davy Jones is watching down below, below, below,
Down deep, deep down, down below.
James Stuart Montgomery
[Pg 107]
The Winds of Heaven
[Pg 108]
“Life is sweet, brother.”
“Do you think so?”
“Think so? There’s Night and Day, brother, both sweet
things; sun, moon and stars, brother, all sweet things;
There’s likewise a wind on the heath.
Life is very sweet brother.”
George Borrow
109
Do You Fear the Wind?
Do you fear the force of the wind,
The slash of the rain?
Go face them and fight them,
Be savage again.
Go hungry and cold like the wolf,
Go wade like the crane:
The palms of your hands will thicken,
The skin of your cheeks will tan,
You’ll grow ragged and weary and swarthy,
But you’ll walk like a man!
Hamlin Garland
Hark to the Shouting
Wind
Hark to the shouting Wind!
Hark to the flying Rain!
And I care not though I never see
A bright blue sky again.
There are thoughts in my breast to-day
That are not for human speech;
But I hear them in the driving storm,
And the roar upon the beach.
And oh, to be with that ship
That I watched through the blinding brine!
O Wind! for thy sweepy land and sea!
O Sea! for a voice like thine!
[Pg 110]
Shout on, thou pitiless Wind,
To the frightened and flying Rain!
I care not though I never see
A calm blue sky again.
Henry Timrod
Who Has Seen the Wind?
Who has seen the wind?
Neither I nor you:
But when the leaves hang trembling,
The wind is passing thro’.
Who has seen the wind?
Neither you nor I:
But when the trees bow down their heads,
The wind is passing by.
Christina Rossetti
Wind
Wind, wind—heather gipsy
Whistling in my tree!
All the heart of me is tipsy
On the sound of thee.
Sweet with scent of clover,
Salt with breath of sea,
Wind, wind—wayman lover,
Whistling in my tree!
John Galsworthy
[Pg 111]
The Sea-Wind
Winnow me through with thy keen clear breath,
Wind with the tang of the sea!
Speed through the closing gates of day,
Find me, and fold me, and have thy way,
And take thy will of me!
Use my soul as you use the sky,—
Gray sky of this sullen day!
Clear its doubt as you speed its wrack
Of storm-clouds burning its splendor back,
Giving it gold for gray!
Bring me word of the moving ships,
Halyards and straining spars;
Come to me clear from the sea’s wide breast
While the last lights die in the yellow west
Under the first white stars!
Batter the closed doors of my heart
And set my spirit free!
For I stifle here in this crowded place
Sick for the tenantless fields of space,
Wind with the tang of the sea!
Arthur Ketchum
I Meant to Do My
Work Today
Imeant to do my work to-day—
But a brown bird sang in the apple-tree
And a butterfly flitted across the field,
And all the leaves were calling me.
[Pg 112]
And the wind went sighing over the land,
Tossing the grasses to and fro,
And a rainbow held out its shining hand—
So what could I do but laugh and go?
Richard Le Gallienne
That Wind Is Best
Whichever way the wind doth blow
Some heart is glad to have it so;
Then blow it east or blow it west,
The wind that blows, that wind is best.
Then, whatsoever wind doth blow,
My heart is glad to have it so;
And blow it east or blow it west,
The wind that blows, that wind is best.
Caroline Atherton Mason
Happy Wind
Oh, happy wind, how sweet
Thy life must be!
The great, proud fields of gold
Run after thee:
And here are flowers, with heads
To nod and shake;
And dreaming butterflies
To tease and wake.
Oh, happy wind, I say,
To be alive this day.
William H. Davies
[Pg 113]
Wind-Litany
In this world I shall not find
Any Comforter like Wind,
Any friend to so endure,
Any love so strong, so sure.
I was born when Wind with Star
Linked its magic, and from far
Whispered out my destiny—
And the Winds have brothered me.
Strong young hill-winds roistering
Up the steep with me and Spring,
Wild wet thrilling ocean-gales
Flinging out my swelling sails,
Or the little dawning-airs
Rising pure as baby-prayers—
These have loved me since my birth
On the wind-swept swinging earth.
Rose-perfumed night-air that slips
Like a kiss across my lips,
Smoke-tanged wood-breath—they can sweep
All old childhood from its sleep
Underneath thick-fallen days
Heaped and dun across my ways;
For until the end shall be,
Scent o’ wind is Memory.
I remember when befell
Heartbreak fierce, intolerable,
And no voice or touch but bound
Deeper torment on the wound:
Yet a little wind could rise
Stroking cheek and tear-wet eyes,
[Pg 114]
Breathing, “Hush! All pain shall pass!
Still are winds, and skies, and grass!”
God, when all of earth shall lie
Stripped and new beneath Thine eye,
And Thy gold stars fall unstrung,
And Thy curtain-sky down-flung,
And Thy seas are lifted up
Whole from out their empty cup,
Grant me still, in Heaven’s place
Sweet swift winds across my face!
Margaret Widdemer
A Morning
The glad, mad wind went singing by,
The white clouds drove athwart the blue,
Bold beauty of the morning sky
And all the world was sun and dew,
And sweet cold air with sudden glints of gold
Like spilled stars glowing in the cedars’ hold.
I laughed for very joy of life,
Oh, thrilling veins, oh, happy heart,
Of this glad world with beauty rife,
Exult that we too are a part;
Rejoice! Rejoice! that miracle of birth
Gave us this golden heritage of earth.
Oh, bold, blue sky, oh, keen, glad wind,
I wonder me if this may be,
That some day, leaving life behind,
[Pg 115]
Our eyes shall view new land, new sea
So exquisite that, lo! with thrilling breath,
We shall laugh loud for very joy of death.
Theodosia Garrison
The Wind’s Life
Ilove the silver-shaken,
The windy tops of trees
That heave and lift in sequence,
Like running surf of seas,
With swathes of changing purples
And vistas golden-deep
Where, for an unstirred moment,
The sunlight lies asleep.
Harry Kemp
The Mystic
Ihave ridden the wind,
I have ridden the sea,
I have ridden the moon and stars.
I have set my feet in the stirrup seat
Of a comet coursing Mars.
And everywhere
Thro’ the earth and air
My thought speeds, lightning-shod,
It comes to a place where checking pace
It cries, “Beyond lies God!”
[Pg 116]
I have ridden the wind,
I have ridden the night,
I have ridden the ghosts that flee
From the vaults of death like a chilling breath
Over eternity.
And everywhere
Is the world laid bare—
Ether and star and clod—
Until I wind to its brink and find
But the cry, “Beyond lies God!”
I have ridden the wind,
I have ridden the stars,
I have ridden the force that flies
With far intent thro’ the firmament
And each to each allies.
And everywhere
That a thought may dare
To gallop, mine has trod—
Only to stand at last on the strand
Where just beyond lies God.
Cale Young Rice
[Pg 117]
The Hill-Born
[Pg 118]
Again among the hills! The shaggy hills! The clear arousing air comes like a call Of bugle notes across the pines, and thrills My heart as if a hero had just spoken.
Richard Hovey
119
The Cry of the Hillborn
Iam homesick for the mountains—
My heroic mother hills—
And the longing that is on me
No solace ever stills.
I would climb to brooding summits
With their old untarnished dreams,
Cool my heart in forest shadows
To the lull of falling streams;
Hear the innocence of aspens
That babble in the breeze,
And the fragrant sudden showers
That patter on the trees.
I am lonely for my thrushes
In their hermitage withdrawn,
Toning the quiet transports
Of twilight and of dawn.
I need the pure, strong mornings,
When the soul of day is still,
With the touch of frost that kindles
The scarlet on the hill;
Lone trails and winding woodroads
To outlooks wild and high,
And the pale moon waiting sundown
Where ledges cut the sky.
I dream of upland clearings
Where cones of sumac burn,
[Pg 120]
And gaunt and gray-mossed boulders
Lie deep in beds of fern;
The gray and mottled beeches,
The birches’ satin sheen,
The majesty of hemlocks
Crowning the blue ravine.
My eyes dim for the skyline
Where purple peaks aspire,
And the forges of the sunset
Flare up in golden fire.
There crests look down unheeding
And see the great winds blow,
Tossing the huddled tree-tops
In gorges far below;
Where cloud-mists from the warm earth
Roll up about their knees,
And hang their filmy tatters
Like prayers upon the trees.
I cry for night-blue shadows
On plain and hill and dome,—
The spell of old enchantments,
The sorcery of home.
Bliss Carman
Up a Hill and a Hill
Up a hill and a hill there’s a sudden orchard-slope,
And a little tawny field in the sun;
[Pg 121]
There’s a gray wall that coils like a twist of frayed-out rope,
And grasses nodding news one to one.
Up a hill and a hill there’s a windy place to stand,
And between the apple-boughs to find the blue
Of the sleepy summer sea, past the cliffs of orange sand,
With the white charmed ships sliding through.
Up a hill and a hill there’s a little house as gray
As a stone that the glaciers scored and stained;
With a red rose by the door, and a tangled garden-way,
And a face at the window, checker-paned.
I could climb, I could climb, till the shoes fell off my feet,
Just to find that tawny field above the sea!
Up a hill and a hill,—oh, the honeysuckle’s sweet!
And the eyes at the window watch for me!
Fannie Stearns Davis
Hills
Inever loved your plains!—
Your gentle valleys,
Your drowsy country lanes
And pleachèd alleys.
I want my hills!—the trail
That scorns the hollow.—
Up, up the ragged shale
Where few will follow,
Up, over wooded crest
And mossy boulder
[Pg 122]
With strong thigh, heaving chest,
And swinging shoulder,
So let me hold my way,
By nothing halted,
Until, at close of day,
I stand, exalted,
High on my hills of dream—
Dear hills that know me!
And then, how fair will seem
The lands below me,
How pure, at vesper-time,
The far bells chiming!
God, give me hills to climb,
And strength for climbing!
Arthur Guiterman
Again Among the Hills
Again among the hills!
The shaggy hills!
The clear arousing air comes like a call
Of bugle notes across the pines, and thrills
My heart as if a hero had just spoken.
Again among the hills!
The jubilant, unbroken,
Long dreaming of the hills!
Far off, Ascutney smiles as one at peace;
And over all
The golden sunlight pours, and fills
The hollow of the earth, like a god’s joy.
[Pg 123]
Again among the hills!
The tranquil hills
That took me as a boy
And filled my spirit with the silences!
O indolent, far-reaching hills that lie
Secure in your own strength, and take your ease
Like careless giants ’neath the summer sky—
What is it to you, O hills,
That anxious men should take thought for the morrow?
What has your might to do with thought or sorrow,
Or cark and cumber of conflicting wills?
Lone Pine, that thron’st thyself upon the height,
Aloof and kingly, overlooking all,
Yet uncompanioned, with the Day and Night
For pageant and the winds for festival!
I was thy minion once, and now renew
Mine ancient fealty—
To that which shaped me still remaining true,
And through allegiance only growing free.
The rising of the wind among the pines,
The runic wind, full of old legendries!
It talks to the ancient trees
Of sights and signs
And strange earth-creatures strong to make or mar—
Such tales as when the firelight flickered out
In the old days men heard and had no doubt.
O wind, what is your spell?
Borne on your cry, the ages slip away,
And lo, I too am of that elder day;
I crouch by the logs and hear
With credent ear
And simple marvel the far tales men tell.
[Pg 124]
... Night on the hills!
And the ancient stars emerge.
The silence of their mighty distances
Compels the world to peace. Now sinks the surge
Of life to a soft stir of mountain rills,
And over the swarm and urge
Of eager men sleep falls and darkling ease.
Night on the hills!
Dark mother-Night, draw near;
Lay hands on us and whisper words of cheer
So softly, oh, so softly! Now may we
Be each as one that leaves his midnight task
And throws his casement open; and the air
Comes up across the lowlands from the sea
And cools his temples, as a maid might ask
With shy caress what speech would never dare;
And he leans back to her demure desires,
And as a dream sees far below
The city with its lights aglow
And blesses in his heart his brothers there;
Then toward the eternal stars again aspires.
Richard Hovey
Hill Hunger
Iwant to stride the hills! My feet cry out
For hills! Oh, I am sick to death of streets:
The nausea of pavements and people always about;
The savagery of mortar and steel that beats
Me under, hedges me in; the iron shiver
Of traffic!—I want to stride the hills, I want
Hills toned frantic silver or a quiver
[Pg 125]
Of scarlet; hills that hunger and grow gaunt!
I am tired of steps and steps, and a thousand flights
Of stairs resounding, shuffling, quarreling
With shoes. I want a hill on windy nights,
When April pauses with me, clambering
Over the purple side to the top, until
We pull ourselves up by a star—the hill! the hill!
Joseph Auslander
Afternoon on a Hill
Iwill be the gladdest thing
Under the sun!
I will touch a hundred flowers
And not pick one.
I will look at cliffs and clouds
With quiet eyes,
Watch the wind bow down the grass,
And the grass rise.
And when lights begin to show
Up from the town,
I will mark which must be mine,
And then start down!
Edna St. Vincent Millay
The Hills
Omy Soul, let us go unto our hills,
We were native to them one day, you and I—
Less dwellers of the earth than of the sky
[Pg 126]
Where the holy sense of silence stays and stills,
Like a hand of benediction lifted high.
We have stayed in this market-place too long;
We have bartered with the birth-right in our breast;
We have shamed us with buffoonery and jest,
Nor raised our eyes to where our hills were strong,
Above this petty region of unrest.
O, my Soul, let us go unto our hills,
To their wonderful, high silence and their might,
Where the old dreams shall whisper us by night
Till the sullen heart within us stirs and thrills,
And wakes to weep and wonder and delight.
O my soul, let us go unto our hills.
Theodosia Garrison
On a Hill
Spring on a wind-swept hill!
The grass at our feet
Sheered into waves of light!
Spring, and the woodbird’s trill!
Spring, and the stars of night
Turned dewdrops glist’ning sweet.
Earth-chained we stand,
Thinking unearthly things,
Looking across the land,
Over the hills, beyond the sea,
Our souls on tireless wings
Soaring Eternity.
Spring! oh, the wind’s rush
In the joyous trees!
[Pg 127]
Oh, wide, free sky, and white
Laughing clouds! And the hush
When, as a musician’s might,
God’s Hand rests on His keys.
Irene Rutherford McLeod
[Pg 129]
Traveller’s Joy
[Pg 130]
Whose farthest footstep never strayed beyond the village of his birth Is but a lodger for the night in this old wayside inn of earth. Tomorrow he shall take his pack and set out for the ways beyond On the old trail from star to star, an alien and a vagabond.
Richard Hovey
131
Traveller’s Joy
What went you, Pilgrim, for to see?
A sign or wonder-thing maybe?
Some marvel or a holy sight
As clerks in chronicles do write?
For you have gone and come again,
Now tell us plain?
I saw the sky from rim to rim
Full-filled with light up to the brim,
As though it were a mighty cup
To God’s lip holden up.
I saw a river and a down,
A harbor and a little town,
A marshland blue with irises—
I saw all these.
Saw, too, a sedgy pond where lay
Lilies like anchored stars that Day
Had ravished from the summer night
And kept them there alight.
I saw a hill-side gold with furze,
And wildrose banks and junipers
Distilling fragrance pungent-sweet;
I saw a path that called my feet
To go with it as any friend,
To heart’s desire at the end.
Sooth, all of these! but ’mid them all
Did nothing wonderful befall?
No miracle?
Yea, but I have no word to tell
Of that great thing that happened me—
I saw the sea!
[Pg 132]
O wide, and blue and infinite!
League upon league of space and light!
I think that down this sapphire floor
One might walk straight to heaven’s door
And lift its golden latchet-bar,
Nor find it far
Or very strange, as one would guess,
After such earthly loveliness.
Poor pilgrim, is this all your store
Of tales to tell? Is there no more
Than this that any man might show?
Yea, all is told. How should you know
That I have looked on Beauty’s face,
And being far from men a space
Have found at springs of Quietness
The hands that heal, the hands that bless—
Have known the sun and wind and trod
The holy earth and talked with God!
Arthur Ketchum
Ellis Park
Little park that I pass through,
I carry off a piece of you
Every morning hurrying down
To my work-day in the town;
Carry you for country there
To make the city ways more fair.
I take your trees
And your breeze,
Your greenness,
Your cleanness,
Some of your shade, some of your sky,
[Pg 133]
Some of your calm as I go by;
Your flowers to trim
The pavements grim;
Your space for room in the jostled street,
And grass for carpet to my feet.
Your fountains take and sweet bird calls
To sing me from my office walls.
All that I can see
I carry off with me.
But you never miss my theft,
So much treasures you have left.
As I find you, fresh at morning,
So I find you, home returning,
Nothing lacking from your grace.
All your riches wait in place
For me to borrow
On the morrow.
Do you hear this praise of you,
Little park that I pass through?
Helen Hoyt
Afoot
Long is the road ’twixt town and town that runs,
Travelled by many a lordly cavalcade,
With trappings gay, and rich caparisons,
Jester and squire, and laughing knight and maid:
With gallant clash and stir they go their way:
I trudge afoot thro’ all the drouth of day.
For me, the misty meadows fresh with morn,
The tramp thro’ noontide heat to evening gray,
[Pg 134]
The far-seen smoke from the day’s goal upborne,
The halt, the friendly greeting by the way,
The distant hill beyond far hill descried,
The road by day, the rest at eventide.
I know each wayside wood, each moorland brown,
Each hidden by-way and reposeful nook,
Where I may linger when the sun goes down,
Dipping tired feet in some cool flowing brook;
I know the free hill and the glooming glen,
And kindly fires, and humble homes of men.
C. Fox-Smith
The Going of His Feet
His feet went here and there
About the common earth.
He touched to grandeur all
Men held of little worth.
He loved the growing flowers,
The small bright singing birds,
The patient flocks of sheep,
The many-pastured herds.
The field of rippling corn
That shimmered in the sun,
The soft blue smoke of eve
That curled when day was done....
He did not search afar
For what He had to say:
His mind reached forth and drew
Its strength from every day:}
[Pg 135]
The struggling nets, alive
With fish drawn from the sea
Supplied Him with the apt
And chosen simile....
He saw a neighbor build
A house that did not stand—
And men may not forget
The House Upon The Sand;
He saw a widow drop
Her mite into the hoard—
And to eternity
That treasure is up-stored;
He heard a publican
Who thought none others there—
The souls of all mankind
Are richer for that prayer....
O, Poet of the World,
I pray Thee, come to me,
That my lame heart might walk,
That my dark soul may see;
And teach me, too, to go
About the ways of earth
And find the Wealth of God
In things of little worth!
Harry Kemp
Down East and Up Along
Down east and up along the fringy coast of Maine
There’s rumor of the summer and the warm soft rain.
There’s lisp of little leaves astir in the heart of every tree,
[Pg 136]
There’s gossip in the grasses that run down to meet the sea.
In my heart I hear them calling like a siren’s song,
“Come and share the glories of down east and up along!”
Down east and up along the brooks are flowing full,
The gray sea is blue again, the spring tides pull,
The keening of the winter wind no longer haunts the seas,
There’s the velvet touch of raindrops upon the southern breeze.
The throb of life resurgent is calling loud and long,
“Come and share the glories of down east and up along!”
Down east and up along the sun is warm again,
Calling to the hungry hearts of city-weary men.
Telling of the golden days in a land of woods and sea,
A land of summer glory and of autumn ecstasy.
You can almost hear the music of the hovering angel throng,
For the very edge of Heaven lies down east and up along!
Edwin Osgood Grover
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;
[Pg 137]
The outward eye, the quiet will,
And the striding hart 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 the gathering frost
(Or is it their slogan, plaintive and shrill,
As they beat on their corselets, valiant still?)
A hunger fit for the kings of the sea,
And a loaf of bread for Dickon and me;
A thirst like that of the Thirsty Sword,
And a jug of cider on the board;
An idle noon, a bubbling spring,
The sea in the pine-tops murmuring;
A scrap of gossip at the ferry;
A comrade neither glum nor merry,
[Pg 138]
Asking nothing, revealing naught,
But minting his words from a fund of thought,
A keeper of silence eloquent,
Needy, yet royally well content,
Of the mettled breed, yet abhorring strife,
And full of the mellow juice of life,
No fidget and no reformer, just
A calm observer of ought and must,
A lover of books, but a reader of man,
No cynic and no charlatan,
Who never defers and never demands,
But smiling, takes the world in his hands,—
Seeing it good as when God first saw
And gave it the weight of His will for law.
And Oh, the joy that is never won,
But follows and follows the journeying sun,
By marsh and tide, by meadow and stream,
A will-o’-the-wisp, a light-o’-dream,
Delusion afar, delight anear,
From morrow to morrow, from year to year,
A jack-o’-lantern, a fairy fire,
A dare, a bliss, and a desire!
The racy smell of the forest loam,
When the stealthy, sad-heart leaves go home;
[Pg 139]
(O leaves, O leaves, I am one with you,
Of the mould and the sun and the wind and the dew!)
The broad gold wake of the afternoon;
The silent fleck of the cold new moon;
The sound of the hollow sea’s release
From stormy tumult to starry peace;
With only another league to wend;
And two brown arms at the journey’s end!
These are the joys of the open road—
For him who travels without a load.
Bliss Carman
Song of the Open
There’s a whisper in the orchard, there’s a laughter in the breeze,
There’s a catbird’s chuckle in the maple tree;
And the wind has come from westward, scattering the maple-keys.
Oh, it’s time to break your fetters and be free!
All the rain’s astir and calling, all the grass is wet and brown,
All the world waits just beyond the window-pane;
And the day is dull and dripping in the gray, gas-lighted town,
But the country’s fresh and clean with fall again.
Oh, it’s out along the prairie with the cool rain in your face,
[Pg 140]
And it’s out along the river flowing free,
And it’s out across the hill-tops in a flying-footed race
With just your heart to bear you company.
There’s the prairie curving softly with its golden blooms aglow,
And the purple splashes on its ripened flanks;
And the idle grassy hollows where the brilliant salvias grow,
And the sturdy cat-tails marshal out their ranks.
Ah, the scarlet of the orchards and the saffron of the fields!
Ah, the purple of the vineyards in the sun!
Ah, the river in the sunlight, flashing silver as a shield
For a moment—and your Indian summer’s done.
So it’s home along the prairie with the north wind blowing chill,
And it’s home across the meadow’s heaving sea,
And it’s home with winter shouting just beyond the farthest hill,
But yet the road is open and is free.
Sara Hamilton Birchall
Rebellion
To wake at morn,
And hear the little laugh
Of the lake-wind in the trees;
To watch at dawn
The earliest sunbeam kiss
The mist-crowned, towering peaks
And glide down to the plains.
[Pg 141]
Ah, that is Life!
Not this—
To wake at morn,
And hear the swelling roar
Of Man, Beast and Machine,
Toiling in murky air
And a city’s sweat!
At noon to dream
Where Nature’s bowers are hid
Beneath an arch
Of twined and intersticing vines,
While on the air
Quivers the chanting of the sighing woods,
And the songs of mating birds.
Ah, that is Life!
Not this—
At noon to pause,
And lay aside the pen for one brief hour:
Then to return, as I did yesterday,
Will do to-morrow and on all to-morrows—
Oh, Fool, Machine, and Slave!
Again at dusk,
To watch the sun’s last ray
Fade in the west;
To feel Earth’s grand transition
From day to night—
That moment when the world
Pauses and knows itself!
The Angelus chimes
And echoes round the Earth;
Here the Muezzin’s call,
There a child’s lullaby,
[Pg 142]
And now a poor serf’s prayer....
Earth’s evensong!
To hear that is to live!
Not this—
To breast the roaring surge
Of thousands, pale and tired, dead in soul,
Crowding with merciless haste toward home.
Home?...
Past ere the sweet of home has touched the sense!
To toil that we may sleep
That better we may toil;
To toil that we may eat,
That better we may toil.
Ay, that is Life; but still—
But still we dream!
Stephen Chalmers
The Tree-Top Road
Life’s sweetest joys are hidden
In unsubstantial things;
An April rain, a fragrance,
A vision of blue wings:
And what are memory and hope
But dreams? And yet the bread
On which these little lives of ours
Are fed and comforted!
Without imagination
The soul becomes a clod,
Missing the trail of beauty,
Losing the way to God.
And I have built a templed-stair
[Pg 143]
Out of a lilac bloom
And climbed to heaven with purple pomp
And censers of perfume!
I have no feud with Labor,
But at the Gates of June
I fling away my dusty pack
And join in Youth’s glad tune.
And just forgetting for a while
That I am worn and gray,
Go sailing off with Peter Pan
Along the Tree-top Way!
May Riley Smith
Early Morning at Bargis
Clear air and grassy lea,
Stream-song and cattle-bell—
Dear man, what fools are we
In prison-walls to dwell!
To live our days apart
From green things and wide skies,
And let the wistful heart
Be cut and crushed with lies!
Bright peaks!—And suddenly
Light floods the placid dell,
The grass-tops brush my knee:
A good crop it will be,
So all is well!
O man, what fools are we
In prison-walls to dwell!
Hermann Hagedorn
[Pg 144]
Denial
It is not down this road I walk,
Or through these brown-leaved trees;
For in my heart I loiter where
The clover calls the bees;
Where trees are green and streams are warm,
And drowsy life is sweet—
It is not down this lane I go
With tired, reluctant feet.
Lancaster Pollard
“A la Belle Étoile”
Oh, who will lodge at my Inn tonight,
And live both fair and fine,
With a blossoming blackberry vine for a gate,
And a friendly star for a sign?
Good sir, my Inn is a gentle Inn,
The wine is sweet and old;
’Tis Adam’s, sir, with a fine bouquet,
And the color of liquid gold.
The carriages roll on the rocky road
To a musty house afar;
But the gentlefolk stop by the blackberry gate
At the Inn of the Beautiful Star.
Sweet fern, sweet fern for your pillow, sir,
And a quick-eared faun for your mate,
[Pg 145]
And a firefly’s light for your candle bright—
Good sooth, we sleep in state.
The winds go murmuring by at dusk
And call you up at dawn,
To walk through the fairies’ handkerchiefs
And startle a sleeping fawn.
When day is red on the river’s bed,
And bright on quartz and spar,
We’ll say our short St. Martin’s grace
At the Inn of the Beautiful Star.
The blackberry vine is a maiden now,
With her pale stars in the dew;
Come back next month, good sir, there’ll be
Sweet blackberries for you.
We’ll wish you luck from the blackberry gate.
Although you wander far,
’Tis here that you’ll come home at last—
To our Inn of the Beautiful Star.
Sara Hamilton Birchall
Journey
Ah, could I lay me down in this long grass
And close my eyes, and let the quiet wind
Blow over me,—I am so tired, so tired
Of passing pleasant places! All my life,
Following Care along the dusty road,
Have I looked back at loveliness and sighed;
Yet at my hand an unrelenting hand
Tugged ever, and I passed. All my life long
[Pg 146]
Over my shoulder have I looked at peace;
And now I fain would lie in this long grass
And close my eyes,
Yet onward!
Cat-birds call
Through the long afternoon, and creeks at dusk
Are guttural. Whippoorwills wake and cry,
Drawing the twilight close about their throats.
Only my heart makes answer. Eager vines
Go up the rocks and wait; flushed apple-trees
Pause in their dance and break the ring for me;
Dim, shady wood-roads, redolent of fern
And bayberry, that through sweet bevies thread
Of round-faced roses, pink and petulant,
Look back and beckon ere they disappear.
Only my heart, only my heart responds,
Yet, ah, my path is sweet on either side
All through the dragging day,—sharp underfoot,
And hot, and like dead mist the dry dust hangs—
But far, oh, far as passionate eye can reach,
And long, ah, long as rapturous eye can cling,
The world is mine; blue hill, still silver lake,
Broad field, bright flower, and the long white road.
A gateless garden, and an open path;
My feet to follow, and my heart to hold.
Edna St. Vincent Millay
The Sojourner
Iwill arise and go; the wind is fain of me,
The laughing wind that stirs my climbing rose;
The tiny clusters nod and talk together,
But what their secret may be, no one knows.
[Pg 147]
I will arise and go; the wind is fain of me,
The rose is heavy in the southern town,
The wild geese travel northward in the mornings,
The bold-eyed southern spring tears wide her gown.
I will arise and go; the wind is fain of me,
The last snow melts beneath the gray stone walls,
The green young sedges fringe the river-margin,
And in my heart the Northland calls and calls.
I will arise and go; the wind is fain of me.
Too long I wait in summer’s tasselled hall,
Too long I dream amid the tulip blossoms,
Too long I linger when I hear the call.
I will arise and go to seek the mountains,
I will return my playfellows to greet;
Once more the open hills and the sweet meadow,
Once more the virgin Northland’s lips to meet.
Sara Hamilton Birchall
Traveller’s Rest
When you are tired of the long road and the open sky,
I wish it may be my door that you’re passing by:
I wish it may be my hearth where you will sit down
And tell your tales of the land and sea and the strange far town.
Oh, come you in from eastward or come you in from the west,
Here’s good cheer to greet you and welcome of the best:
[Pg 148]
Oh, come you with your pockets full or come you home poor,
Here’s a place by the fireside and an open door.
You’ll tell me where you were since, and the things you’ve seen
Up and down the wide world where so long you’ve been,—
All the time that I’ve been here and you far away,—
And then awhile be silent, as good friends may.
And then awhile listen to the wind and rain,
Moaning in the chimney-breast, beating at the pane,—
Dark and cold outside there, and the stormy skies,
And you sitting down here with the firelight in your eyes.
C. Fox-Smith
Far From the Madding
Crowd
It seems to me I’d like to go
Where bells don’t ring nor whistles blow,
Nor clocks don’t strike nor gongs don’t sound,
But where there’s stillness all around.
Not real still stillness; just the trees’
Low whisperings or the croon of bees;
The drowsy tinklings of the rill,
Or twilight song of whippoorwill.
’Twould be a joy could I behold
The dappled fields of green and gold,
Or in the cool, sweet clover lie
And watch the cloud-ships drifting by.
[Pg 149]
I’d like to find some quaint old boat,
And fold its oars, and with it float
Along the lazy, limpid stream
Where water-lilies drowse and dream.
Sometimes it seems to me I must
Just quit the city’s din and dust,
For fields of green and skies of blue;
And, say! How does it seem to you?
Nixon Waterman
Streams
Iso love water-laughter,
Its bubbling flecks and gleams,
I pray in the hereafter
There somewhere may be streams.
I’d have for my companion
In some celestial nook,
Beneath a spreading banyan,
The music of a brook.
Its measures would entice me,
Uncumbered by the clay,
Its melody suffice me
Till drooped the heavenly day.
Then its all-liquid laughter
Would murmur through my dreams;
I pray in the hereafter
There somewhere may be streams.
Clinton Scollard
[Pg 150]
The Call
Imust get out to the woods again, to the whispering tree and the birds awing,
Away from the haunts of pale-faced men, to the spaces wide where strength is king;
I must get out where the skies are blue and the air is clean and the rest is sweet,
Out where there’s never a task to do or a goal to reach or a foe to meet.
I must get out on the trails once more that wind through shadowy haunts and cool,
Away from the presence of wall and door, and see myself in a crystal pool;
I must get out with the silent things, where neither laughter nor hate is heard,
Where malice never the humblest stings and no one is hurt by a spoken word.
Oh, I’ve heard the call of the tall white pine, and heard the call of the running brook,
I’m tired of the tasks which each day are mine, I’m weary of reading a printed book,
I want to get out of the din and strife, the clank and clamor of turning wheel,
And walk for a day where life is life, and the joys are true and the pictures real.
Edgar A. Guest
The Road that Leads to
Home
My road is a by-road, with big trees reaching high,
A tapestry of living green against a sapphire sky;
[Pg 151]
An olden road, a golden road, is the road I love to roam
A gleaming road, a dreaming road, the road that leads to home.
My road is a shy road, where whispering lovers stray
And breathe the scent of the bramble-rose and fields of new-mown hay;
A road to woo with a song or two, ere the day has yet begun,
A smiling road, a beguiling road, that dips into the sun.
My road is a by-road, where townfolk never tread,
With wild wind flowers in the grass, and green leaves overhead;
Oh, dawn-mist road, oh, star-kissed road, across the white sea foam
I hear you crying, hear you sighing, calling the wand’rer home.
Ethel E. Mannin
[Pg 153]
Echoes from Vagabondia
[Pg 154]
The bed was made, the room was fit, by punctual eve the stars were lit. The air was still, the water ran, no need was there for maid or man, When we put up, my ass and I, at God’s green caravanserai.
Robert Louis Stevenson
155
Wanderthirst
Beyond the East the sunrise, beyond the West the sea,
And East and West the wanderthirst that will not let me be;
It works in me like madness, to bid me say good-bye;
For the seas call and the stars call, and oh! the call of the sky.
I know not where the white road runs, nor what the blue hills are,
But a man can have the Sun for friend, and for his guide a star;
And there’s no end of voyaging when once the voice is heard,
For the river calls and the road calls, and oh! the call of a bird!
Yonder the long horizon lies, and there by night and day
The old ships draw to home again, the young ships sail away;
And come I may, but go I must, and, if men ask you why,
You may put the blame on the stars and the sun and the white road and the sky.
Gerald Gould
The Vagabond
To tread the path of glory needs a braver soul than I,
A man who will not stop to watch the white clouds drifting by,
A man who will not pause to throw a pebble in a stream
Or stretch full length upon its bank, the captive of a dream.
[Pg 156]
A braver soul than I must tread the rugged way and long,
A man who will not stop to catch the wild canary’s song,
A man who’ll pass a thousand charms and never turn to see
The beauty of the petaled dress upon an apple tree.
To tread the path of glory needs a stronger soul than mine,
A man that isn’t tempted when the air is sharp as wine,
A man that has no vision save the golden goal he seeks,
And doesn’t hear the language which the voice of nature speaks.
But I am prey to woods and fields, to sunny hills and streams,
And I’ve a soul which likes to drift and tease itself with dreams,
And weak am I that should be strong—a sunbeam on a pond
Has but to wink an eye at me, and I’m a vagabond.
Edgar A. Guest
Gipsy Song
Gipsy, gipsy, gipsy girl!
April’s at the door,
April’s whistling through the wood—
Must I call once more?
Gipsy, gipsy, gipsy girl!
Keen across the night
Hylas flutes among the pools
And the road’s moon-white.
Gipsy, gipsy, gipsy girl!
Must I whistle still,
[Pg 157]
Waiting at your silent door
On the ferny hill?
Moonlit road and breaking sea,
Wet wind from the south!
Gipsy, all your lover lacks
Is your scarlet mouth!
Sara Hamilton Birchall
The Road To Vagabondia
He was sitting on a doorstep as I went strolling by;
A lonely little beggar with a wistful, homesick eye—
And he wasn’t what you’d borrow
And he wasn’t what you’d steal—
But I guessed his heart was breaking,
So I whistled him to heel.
They had stoned him through the city streets and naught the city cared,
But I was heading outward and the roads are sweeter shared,
So I took him for a comrade and I whistled him away—
On the road to Vagabondia that lies across the day.
Yellow dog he was; but bless you—he was just the chap for me!
For I’d rather have an inch of dog than miles of pedigree.
So we stole away together on the road that has no end
With a new-coined day to fling away and all the stars to spend!
Oh, to walk the road at morning, when the wind is blowing clean,
[Pg 158]
And the yellow daisies fling their gold across a world of green—
For the wind it heals the heart-aches and the sun it dries the scars,
On the road to Vagabondia that lies beneath the stars.
’Twas the wonder of the going cast a spell about our feet—
We walked because the world was young, because the way was sweet;
And we slept in wild-rose meadows by the little wayside farms,
’Til the Dawn came up the highroad with the dead moon in her arms.
Oh, the Dawn it went before us through a shining lane of skies,
And the Dream was at our heartstrings and the light was in our eyes,
And we made no boast of glory and we made no boast of birth,
On the road to Vagabondia that lies across the earth.
Dana Burnet
Gipsy Feet
Oh, gipsy hearts are many enough, but gipsy feet are few!
Many’s the one that loves to dream night-long of stars and dew:
Many’s the one that loves the scent of wood-smoke by the way,
And turns a leaping longing heart to every dawn of day.
[Pg 159]
Gipsy hearts are many enough, but gipsy feet are few.—
Ah, how ill it is to bide unloosed the long year through!
Up and down the loud gray streets, stared at, staring back,
Through tarnished trails of the staggering sun and soot-fog ochre-black;—
Dressed in heavy and sober togs, eating of heavy fare,
Hailed by only the screaming street, “Mind! step lively there!”
Crook-backed over a dusty desk,—bothering to and fro
There in the dull and airless house,—ah, to cut and go!—
Up the hill-roads into the day! Over the sea-ward fells,
Watch the thistle-down dip, and hear the thin sheep’s huddling bells;
Run like fire along the field, worship the heart of the wood,
Kneel by the spring that splits the rock, and find the white rain good.
—Oh, gipsy hearts are many enough, but gipsy feet are few;
And secret gods must we worship still, if we worship fire and dew.
For we must bend at the dusty desk, and over the counter lean,—
Toil and moil in the sun-starved house, though leaves blow red or green.
God, great God of the wind’s caress, God of the sea’s salute,
Why are we chained and muzzled and meshed more than our brother the brute?
Shall there be never a day that all of the gipsy hearts may greet,
Laughing out at the lure of the sun for the lift of the gipsy feet?
[Pg 160]
But oh, though that day is far to come, and the feet forget to go free,
Pray God that the hearts may not forget the hurt and the ecstasy!
Pray God that never the fret may fail when the Spring comes over the year,
That never the thin gay autumn dawns may seem less wild and dear.
For shall it not be the height of Heaven, wonderful, swift, and sweet,
If into the paths of perilous death may wander the gipsy feet?
May wander free, with the risk of the road, the road that the glad Dead know,
Out where the fires of God flame high, and the winds of God lean low!
Fannie Stearns Davis
A Strip of Blue
Ido not own an inch of land,
But all I see is mine,—
The orchard and the mowing-fields,
The lawns and gardens fine.
The winds my tax-collectors are,
They bring me tithes divine,—
Wild scents and subtle essences,
A tribute rare and free;
And, more magnificent than all,
My window keeps for me
A glimpse of blue immensity,—
A little strip of sea.
[Pg 161]
Richer am I than he who owns
Great fleets and argosies;
I have a share in every ship
Won by the inland breeze
To loiter on yon airy road,
Above the apple-trees.
I freight them with my untold dreams;
Each bears my own picked crew;
And nobler cargoes wait for them
Than ever India knew,—
My ships that sail into the East
Across that outlet blue.
Lucy Larcom
Black Ashes
Sometime we shall remember them, the little camping places,
A day long, an hour long, a halt beside the way,
Shall see again before us the mountains’ kindly faces
With the white roads pleading, leading through the hill-mists wreathing gray.
Lichened spur and creeping trail, sun-gold in the west,
Purple moorland, misty lure-land spreading far beneath;
Red-gold flamelight lifting, drifting, round the pine-dark crest
To dim the little village lights asleep upon the heath.
Sometime we shall remember them, from out the days that bind us,
A year long, a life long, that link and hold us fast,
[Pg 162]
Will come a breath of twilight blent with woodsmoke to remind us
Of the little camping places in the springtimes that are past.
White-spread dunes and opal sea, gray gulls slant the spray,
Spiced sweetfern by sandy turn where the sun strikes gold,
Scent of woodsmoke, vagrant, fragrant, ah, it haunts the air today
From the little camping places in the Story That Is Told.
Martha Haskell Clark
The Wander Lure
The robin’s on the wing again; I hear the call o’ spring again,
And fain am I to follow, lass; it calls me not in vain!
Yea, I would join the chorus. Lo! the highway is before us,—
But what if she, my first beloved, should call to me again?
The wander lure is part o’ me, and love is in the heart o’ me,
And I would tread the road with you that leads beyond the door.
I hear the cry o’ laughter, and my feet would follow after,—
But what if she, my first beloved, should call to me once more?
Yea, I will follow you, my lass, around the world and through, my lass,
[Pg 163]
To seek the peace o’ summer moons that waits beside the sea.
We’ll leave the past behind us; come, the joy o’ life will find us,—
But what if she, my first beloved, should call again to me?
Kendall Banning
Comrades of the Trail
Until the day the world shall die
We shall be comrades, you and I.
For we have seen the morning break
In golden beauty on that lake
That rests in intimate grace before
Our cedar cabin’s unlatched door;
And we have heard the rain at night
And blessed our driftwood hearthfire light;
Wakened by thunder, we have crept
Closer and turned again and slept
While the trees crashed, weakening,
And blocked our trail up to the spring.
Dangers of cities never draw
Two close as does the forest’s awe;
Beauties of cities never bind
Memory and heart and soul and mind
As does the dawn in forest places,
Or tree-rent moonlight on our faces.
Husband and wife! If that were all!
Not vows alone have made us thrall,
[Pg 164]
But none can evermore walk free
Bound to each other as are we,
By sky and water, fern and tree.
Mary Carolyn Davies
The Vagrant
Iwill leave the dust of the city street and the noise of the busy town
For the windy moor and the high hill and the peat-stream flowing brown;
I will keep my watch by the camp-fires where the white cliffs lean to the sea,
And dawn shall wake me with golden hands and the rain shall walk with me.
I will seek the place where gypsies roam and strange, wild songs are sung;
I will find once more the magic paths I knew when earth was young,
And the stars will give me comradeship and the wind will be my friend,
And I will send you the fairy gold that lies at the rainbow’s end.
Stretch not your hands nor bid me stay, I hear the white road’s call,
The sun hath kissed the buds from sleep, and I am one with them all;
But I will send you a golden cloak and a pair of silver shoon,
And a dream that the fairies spin from stars on the other side of the moon.
Pauline Slender
[Pg 165]
The Gipsy Wedding
Once more the gipsy aster
Her flaunting kerchief waves,
Once more along the wood-ways
His nuts the squirrel saves;
Once more the vagrant passion
Stirs heart of man and maid,
Once more it is October,
Once more the spell is laid.
And to Saint Bartel’s altar
Two come where was but one,
With goldenrod and beechleaf
Beneath the amber sun;
Two come, Saint Bartelmeo,
With sunbrowned hand in hand,
To pray your blessing, Father,
Upon the golden band.
There in the tall cathedral
Of tamarack and pine,
The old saint gives the blessing,
The sunbrowned fingers twine.
And down the dusky wood-ways
The gipsy lad and maid
Go hand in hand together
Forever unafraid.
Sara Hamilton Birchall
The Vagabond At Home
Oh, it’s spring once more in France, and it’s spring in gay Algiers,
[Pg 166]
And it’s spring along the happy Appian Way;
There are cherries in Japan, and the thrushes’ joy and tears
Pipe for England, “There is nowhere such a day!”
How the call rings clear, commanding: “Hurry over, sail afar
To the date-tree and the banyan’s dim domain;
To the Yangtze and the Yalu, where the bell-topped temples are;
And remember there are castles left in Spain!”
But I hear a whisper steady, blowing down my own home-stream
Full of all the glad romance I used to know:
“Leave the lands beyond to others;
Our wee woodfolk are your brothers;
And the earth is bursting treasure!” So I go.
When the wander urge is on me, there are never bonds that hold;
When the summons comes, it never comes in vain;
But the foreign trails are either far too new or far too old—
Give me April in my native woods again!
Ruth Wright Kauffman
The Gipsy Trail
The white moth to the closing vine,
The bee to the open clover,
And the gipsy blood to the gipsy blood
Ever the wide world over.
Ever the wide world over, lass,
Ever the trail held true,
[Pg 167]
Over the world and under the world,
And back at the last to you.
Out of the dark of the gorgio camp,
Out of the grime and the gray
(Morning waits at the end of the world),
Gipsy, come away!
The wild boar to the sun-dried swamp,
The red crane to her reed,
And the Romany lass to the Romany lad
By the tie of a roving breed.
Morning waits at the end of the world
Where winds unhaltered play,
Nipping the flanks of their plunging ranks,
Till the white sea-horses neigh.
The pied snake to the rifted rock,
The buck to the stony plain,
And the Romany lass to the Romany lad,
And both to the road again.
Both to the road again, again!
Out on a clean sea-track—
Follow the cross of the gipsy trail
Over the world and back!
Follow the Romany patteran
North where the blue bergs sail,
And the bows are gray with the frozen spray,
And the masts are shod with mail.
Follow the Romany patteran
Sheer to the Austral Light,
[Pg 168]
Where the besom of God is the wild south wind,
Sweeping the sea-floors white.
Follow the Romany patteran
West to the sinking sun,
Till the junk-sails lift through the houseless drift,
And the east and the west are one.
Follow the Romany patteran
East where the silence broods
By a purple wave on an opal beach
In the hush of the Mahim Woods.
The wild hawk to the wind-swept sky,
The deer to the wholesome wold,
And the heart of a man to the heart of a maid,
As it was in the days of old.
The heart of a man to the heart of a maid—
Light of my tents, be fleet!
Morning waits at the end of the world,
And the world is all at our feet!
Rudyard Kipling
St. Bartholomew’s On
The Hill
Bartholomew, my brother,
I like your roomy church;
I like your way of leaving
No sinners in the lurch.
I wish the world were wealthy
In ministers like you,
[Pg 169]
When at the lovely August
You give the blessed dew.
I love your rambling Abbey,
So long ago begun,
Whose choirs are in the tree-tops,
Whose censor is the sun.
Its windows are the morning;
Its rafters are the stars;
The fog-banks float like incense
Up from its purple floors.
And where the ruddy apples
Make lamps in the green gloom,
The flowers in congregation
Are never pressed for room;
But in your hillside chapel,
Gay with its gorgeous paints,
They bow before the Presence,—
Sweet, merry little saints.
Bliss Carman
Fishing
“Men will grow weary,” said the Lord,
“Of working for their bed and board.
They’ll weary of the money chase
And want to find a resting place
Where hum of wheel is never heard
And no one speaks an angry word.
[Pg 170]
And selfishness and greed and pride
And petty motives don’t abide.
They’ll need a place where they can go
To wash their souls as white as snow.
They will be better men and true
If they can play a day or two.”
The Lord then made the brooks to flow
And fashioned rivers here below,
And many lakes; for water seems
Best suited for a mortal’s dreams.
He placed about them willow trees
To catch the murmur of the breeze.
And the birds that sing the best
Among the foliage to nest.
He filled each pond and stream and lake
With fish for man to come and take.
Then stretched a velvet carpet deep
On which a weary soul could sleep.
It seemed to me the Good Lord knew
That man would want something to do
When, worn and wearied with the stress
Of battling hard for world success,
When sick at heart of all the strife
And pettiness of daily life.
He knew he’d need, from time to time
To cleanse himself of city grime,
And he would want some place to be
Where hate and greed he’d never see,
And so on lakes and streams and brooks
The Good Lord fashioned fishing nooks.
Edgar A. Guest
[Pg 171]
A Vagabond Song
There is something in the autumn that is native to my blood—
Touch of manner, hint of mood;
And my heart is like a rhyme,
With the yellow and the purple and the crimson keeping time.
The scarlet of the maples can shake me like a cry
Of bugles going by.
And my lonely spirit thrills
To see the frosty asters like a smoke upon the hills.
There is something in October sets the gypsy blood astir;
We must rise and follow her,
When from every hill of flame
She calls and calls each vagabond by name.
Bliss Carman
Have You?
Have you ever built a camp-fire at the closing of the day?
Have you sat and watched the embers glowing red?
With your scanty supper finished and the things all cleared away,
Have you sat and smoked and thought about your bed?
Of the bed you left behind you in the dwelling-place of man,
In the much o’er-furnished room you knew of yore;
Ere you sought the silent places where a fellow learns he can
Do a lot of things he never did before?
[Pg 172]
Have you ever spread a blanket down beneath the star-strewn skies?
Rolled yourself within its cozy folds to sleep,
At the base of mighty mountains, with their peaks that rise and rise?
Have you known the age-old silence that they keep?
Have you seen the red sun climbing up the eastern slope? Then know
You will ne’er forget those rugged, happy days.
What! You’ve never known the glory of the new-born day? Then go—
It’s a road that’s hard to travel—but it pays.
Harry M. Dean
Gypsy-Heart
The April world is misted with emerald and gold;
The meadow-larks are calling sweet and keen;
Gypsy-heart is up and off for woodland and for wold,
Roaming, roaming, roaming through the green.
Gypsy-heart, away!
Oh, the wind—the wind and the sun!
Take the blithe adventure of the fugitive to-day;
Youth will soon be done.
From buds that May is kissing there trembles forth a soul;
The rosy boughs are whispering the white;
Gypsy-heart is heedless now of thrush and oriole,
Dreaming, dreaming, dreaming of delight.
Gypsy-heart, beware!
Oh, the song—the song in the blood!
Magic walks the forest; there’s bewitchment on the air.
Spring is at the flood.
[Pg 173]
The wings of June are woven of fragrance and of fire;
Heap roses, crimson roses, for her throne.
Gypsy-heart is anguished with tumultuous desire,
Seeking, seeking, seeking for its own.
Gypsy-heart, abide!
Oh, the far—the far is the near!
’Tis a foolish fable that the universe is wide.
All the world is here.
Katharine Lee Bates
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.
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.
[Pg 174]
He woos the Poppy and weds the Peach,
Inveigles Daffodilly,
And then like a tramp abandons each
For the gorgeous Canada Lily.
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.
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 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.
Bliss Carman
[Pg 175]
Vagabonds
Upon us vagabonds who take
Our packs and paddles Sunday
The good folk look austerely down,
Though they may smile on Monday.
Some call us pagans, others tramps;
The truth they never knew—
We faithfully attend the Church
Of Saint Bartholomew.
Among the birches on the hill
His holydays are kept
Where thrushes flute the anthems, and
Crumb-charity accept.
The sermon never wearies us;
We hold the Amen pew,
And pay our pew-rent to the Church
Of Saint Bartholomew.
Sara Hamilton Birchall
The Gypsying
Iwish we might go gypsying one day while we’re young—
On a blue October morning
Beneath a cloudless sky,
When all the world’s a vibrant harp
The winds o’ God have strung,
And gay as tossing torches the maples light us by;
The rising sun before us—a golden bubble swung—
I wish we might go gypsying one day while we’re young.
[Pg 176]
I wish we might go gypsying one day before we’re old—
To step it with the wild west wind
And sing the while we go,
Through far forgotten orchards
Hung with jewels red and gold;
Through cool and fragrant forests where never sun may show,
To stand upon a high hill and watch the mist unfold—
I wish we might go gypsying one day before we’re old.
I wish we might go gypsying, dear lad, the while we care.
The while we’ve heart for hazarding,
The while we’ve will to sing,
The while we’ve wit to hear the call
And youth and mirth to spare,
Before a day may find us too sad for gypsying,
Before a day may find us too dull to dream and dare—
I wish we might go gypsying, dear lad, the while we care.
Theodosia Garrison
The Mendicants
We are as mendicants who wait
Along the roadside in the sun.
Tatters of yesterday and shreds
Of morrow clothe us every one.
And some are dotards, who believe
And glory in the days of old;
While some are dreamers, harping still
Upon an unknown age of gold.
Hopeless or witless! Not one heeds,
As lavish Time comes down the way
[Pg 177]
And tosses in the suppliant hat
One great new-minted gold To-day.
O foolish ones, put by your care!
Where wants are many, joys are few;
And at the wilding springs of peace,
God keeps an open house for you.
But there be others, happier few,
The vagabondish sons of God,
Who know the by-ways and the flowers,
And care not how the world may plod.
They idle down the traffic lands,
And loiter through the woods with spring;
To them the glory of the earth
Is but to hear a bluebird sing.
One I remember kept his coin,
And laughing flipped it in the air;
But when two strolling pipe-players
Came by, he tossed it to the pair.
Spendthrift of joy, his childish heart
Danced to their wild outlandish bars;
Then supperless he laid him down
That night, and slept beneath the stars.
Bliss Carman
The Beloved Vagabond
You who were once so careless, I can recall you now,
Your blue-gray visionary eyes, your great and open brow,
[Pg 178]
With naught to bind your heart-strings, and all the world in fee,
You went where all the roads lead, beyond the farthest sea.
Lover of space and skyline, what vision seared your eyes?
What gypsy word was winged to you that bade you gird and rise?
What thread of smoke sent onward your restless, eager feet?
What vagrant heart was waiting your wayward heart to greet?
We, who are kin to the city, across the candles praise
Your tales of camps in twilight, your great and gallant ways,
Your knowledge of the mysteries deep-hidden by the wood,
The pagan trust you placed in man, the world you found so good.
Then leave a patrin for mine eyes that I may follow too,
Some day when all the world grows dim, and I shall beckon you;
Across the distant moorland, from beacon furze piled high,
May I, the newest rover, see your fire against the sky!
W. G. Tinckom-Fernandez
The Secret Voices
Have you heard the secret voices go whispering in your blood,
Of burning wood and falling leaf and swelling Springtime flood?
Have you felt the tang of lusty wind, the stinging lash of rain,
[Pg 179]
As tides of Spring march down the days with summer in their train?
Have you known the zest and sparkle, felt the magic in the air,
And set your feet upon the road that leads to Anywhere?
And seen the skirts of storm-clouds trailing over budding trees,
And drunk the wine of virile life down to the very lees?
Have you heard and have you known the voices of the wind,
That bid a man rise up and go and follow till he find
The pot of gold at the rainbow’s base,
Or a secret dream in a hidden place....
Have you heard the secret voices whispering that Spring has come,
Calling you to rise and follow till you walk into the sun?
Ethel Mannin
[Pg 181]
The Changing Year
[Pg 182]
Who shall inquire of the season, Or question the wind where it blows? We blossom and ask no reason, The Lord of the Garden knows.
Bliss Carman
183
Turn O’ The Year
This is the time when bit by bit
The days begin to lengthen sweet
And every minute gained is joy—
And love stirs in the heart of a boy.
This is the time the sun, of late
Content to lie abed till eight,
Lifts up betimes his sleepy head—
And love stirs in the heart of a maid.
This is the time we dock the night
Of a whole hour of candlelight;
When song of linnet and thrush is heard—
And love stirs in the heart of a bird.
This is the time when sword-blades green,
With gold and purple damascene,
Pierce the brown crocus-bed a-row—
And love stirs in a heart I know.
Katharine Tynan
April Music
The lyric sound of laughter
Fills all the April hills,
The joy-song of the crocus,
The mirth of daffodils.
They ring their golden changes
Through all the azure vales;
The sunny cowslips answer,
Athwart the reedy swales.
[Pg 184]
Far down the woodland aisleways
The trillium’s voice is heard;
The little wavering wind-flowers
Join in with jocund word.
The white cry of the dogwood
Mounts up against the sky;
The breath of violet music
Upon the breeze goes by.
Give me to hear, O April,
These choristers of thine
Calling across the distance
Serene and hyaline;
To clear my clouded vision
Bedimmed and dulled so long,
And heal my aching spirit
With fragrance that is song!
Clinton Scollard
The Year’s Awakening
How do you know that the pilgrim track
Along the belting zodiac
Swept by the sun in his seeming rounds
Is traced by now to the Fishes’ bounds
And into the Ram, when weeks of cloud
Have wrapt the sky in a clammy shroud,
And never as yet a tinct of spring
Has shown in the Earth’s apparelling;
Oh, vespering bird, how do you know,
How do you know?
[Pg 185]
How do you know, deep underground,
Hid in your bed from sight and sound,
Without a turn in temperature,
With weather life can scarce endure,
That light has won a fraction’s strength,
And day put on some moments’ length,
Whereof in merest rote will come,
Weeks hence, mild airs that do not numb;
Oh, crocus root, how do you know,
How do you know?
Thomas Hardy
Spring’s Answer
Iheard God calling
And I came,
His Sun signalled me
With its flame.
His Wind called me
With its song.
His Birds said they had been waiting
Over long.
His little Brooks ran tumbling
Down the hills,
Luring me with laughter
Of rocky rills.
His Grasses, yellow-green,
Standing in the sun,
Held up their fingers
For me to come.
Heart of Oak and heart of Pine
Beat a faint tattoo—
Flowing sap in bole and bud
[Pg 186]
Climbing up anew.
Till at last the summons
Set my heart aflame—
I heard God calling,
And I came!
Edwin Osgood Grover
Morning Song
The grass is taller, greener,
And the birds more loud;
The flowers open freshly
To a sky of cloud.
And man awakens gladly
In a world that’s good,
And thrills to some new beauty
Not quite understood.
Though all the world is clouded
It’s a gray delight—
For spring is swelling, swelling,
And it rained last night.
Lancaster Pollard
April Weather
Soon, ah, soon the April weather
With the sunshine at the door,
And the mellow melting rain-wind
Sweeping from the South once more.
[Pg 187]
Soon the rosy maples budding,
And the willows putting forth,
Misty crimson and soft yellow
In the valleys of the North.
Soon the hazy purple distance,
Where the cabined heart takes wing,
Eager for the old migration
In the magic of the spring.
Soon, ah, soon the budding windflowers
Through the forest white and frail,
And the odorous wild cherry
Gleaming in her ghostly veil.
Soon, about the waking uplands
The hepaticas in blue,—
Children of the first warm sunlight
In their sober Quaker hue,—
All our shining little sisters
Of the forest and the field,
Lifting up their quiet faces
With the secret half revealed.
Soon across the folding twilight
Of the round earth hushed to hear,
The first robin at his vespers
Calling far, serene and clear.
Soon the waking and the summons,
Starting sap in bole and blade,
And the bubbling marshy whisper
Seeping up through bog and glade.
[Pg 188]
Soon the frogs in silver chorus
Through the night, from marsh and swale,
Blowing in their tiny oboes
All the joy that shall not fail,—
Passing up the old earth rapture
By a thousand streams and rills,
From the red Virginian valleys
To the blue Canadian hills.
Soon, ah, soon the splendid impulse,
Nomad longing, vagrant whim,
When a man’s false angels vanish
And the truth comes back to him.
Soon the majesty, the vision,
And the old unfaltering dream,
Faith to follow, strength to stablish,
Will to venture and to seem;
All the radiance, the glamour,
The expectancy and poise,
Of this ancient life renewing
Its temerities and joys.
Soon the immemorial magic
Of the young Aprilian moon,
And the wonder of thy friendship
In the twilight—soon, ah, soon!
Bliss Carman
The Runaway
What are you doing, little day-moon,
Over the April hill?
[Pg 189]
What are you doing, up so soon,
Climbing the sky with silver shoon?
What are you doing at half-past noon,
Slipping along so still?
Are you so eager, the heights unwon,
That you cannot wait,
But, unheeding of wind and sun,
Out of your nest of night must run,
Up where the day is far from done,
Shy little shadow-mate?
Up and away then—with young mists
Tripping, along the blue!
Dance and dally and promise trysts
Unto each that around you lists;
For, little moon, not a one but wists
April’s the time to woo!
Cale Young Rice
Spring Market
It’s foolish to bring money
To any spring wood,
Jewels won’t help you,
Gold’s no good.
Silver won’t buy you
One small leaf.
You may bring joy here,
You may bring grief.
[Pg 190]
You should look for
Tufted moss,
Marked where a light foot
Ran across.
Where the old rose hips
Shrivel brown
And dried clematis
Bloom hangs down.
There you’ll find what
Everyman needs,
Wild religion
Without any creeds,
Green that lifts its
Blossoming head,
New life springing
Among the dead.
You needn’t bring money
To this market place,
Or think you can bargain for
Wild flower grace.
Louise Driscoll
Song in March
Ising the first green leaf upon the bough,
The tiny kindling flame of emerald fire,
The stir amid the roots of reeds, and how
The sap will flush the briar.
[Pg 191]
I sing the sweeping beryl on the slopes,
Ephemeræ that come before the bees,
The ferns renascent, and the virgin hopes
Of pale anemones.
I sing the dream’s unfolding, and I sing
The chrysalis broken by the ice-freed shore,
The clear air winnowed by the bluebird’s wing,
And April at the door!
Clinton Scollard
Flower Chorus
Osuch a commotion under the ground,
When March called “Ho, there! ho!”
Such spreading of rootlets far and wide,
Such whisperings to and fro!
“Are you ready?” the Snowdrop asked,
“’Tis time to start, you know.”
“Almost, my dear!” the Scilla replied,
“I’ll follow as soon as you go.”
Then “Ha! ha! ha!” a chorus came
Of laughter sweet and low,
From millions of flowers under the ground,
Yes, millions beginning to grow.
“I’ll promise my blossoms,” the Crocus said,
“When I hear the blackbird sing.”
And straight thereafter Narcissus cried,
“My silver and gold I’ll bring.”
“And ere they are dulled,” another spoke,
“The hyacinth bells shall ring.”
But the Violet only murmured “I’m here,”
[Pg 192]
And sweet grew the air of spring.
Then “Ha! ha! ha!” a chorus came
Of laughter sweet and low,
From millions of flowers under the ground,
Yes, millions beginning to grow.
Oh, the pretty brave things, thro’ the coldest days
Imprisoned in walls of brown,
They never lost heart tho’ the blast shrieked loud,
And the sleet and the hail came down;
But patiently each wrought her wonderful dress,
Or fashioned her beautiful crown,
And now they are coming to lighten the world
Still shadowed by winter’s frown.
And well may they cheerily laugh “Ha! ha!”
In laughter sweet and low,
The millions of flowers under the ground,
Yes, millions beginning to grow.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
April’s Coming
April comes with sudden showers,
Chilling winds and sunny hours.
April comes with growing green
On the trees still winter-lean.
April brings the singing bird
And a joy that is absurd.
April comes and April goes,
But the flowers April sows—
Earth’s obituary tears—
Wake the immemorial years.
So with Spring’s passing comes
[Pg 193]
Summer with her borrowed drums;
Fall and winter in a ring
Till April comes again with spring.
Lancaster Pollard
The Secret
On that first day so singular
Under the ground,
It was too dark for crescent or for star,
Too deep for sound.
And lying there one thought alone
I could not still:
How soon would snow-white cherry buds be blown
Across the hill.
And then a voice within the tomb
Said very low:
“When April lights her first sharp flame of bloom
You’ll know!”
John Richard Moreland
Spring
All the lanes are lyric,
All the bushes sing;
You are at your kissing,
Spring!
[Pg 194]
Romping with your children
Do not fail to bring
Mary to the haystack,
Spring!
Froth upon the fingers,
Bosom for a king,
Speed her from the milking,
Spring!
Norman Gale
April Weather
Oh, hush, my heart, and take thine ease,
For here is April weather!
The daffodils beneath the trees
Are all a-row together.
The thrush is back with his old note;
The scarlet tulip blowing;
And white, aye, white as my love’s throat—
The dogwood boughs are growing.
The lilac bush is sweet again;
Down every wind that passes,
Fly flakes from hedgerow and from lane;
The bees are in the grasses.
And Grief goes out, and Joy comes in,
And care is but a feather;
And every lad his love can win,
For here is April weather.
Lizette Woodworth Reese
[Pg 195]
Renewal
April, when I heard
Your lyrical low word,
And when upon the hawthorn hedge your first white blossom stirred,
Something strangely came—
Something I cannot name—
And touched my heart, and cleansed my soul with a reviving flame.
When the yellow gleam
Of your hosts that stream—
Jonquil, buttercup, and crocus—made the world a golden dream,
Something, April, said
To my heart that bled—
Bled with old remembrance—“Lo, the grief-strewn days are fled!”
Sursum corda! Now,
When blooms the apple-bough,
April, of your pity, let your light rain kiss my brow;
Heal me, if you will;
Bathe my heart until
I am one with your first primrose or the shining daffodil!
Charles Hanson Towne
April
Something tapped at my window pane,
Someone called me without my door.
Someone laughed like the tinkle o’ rain,
The robin echoed it o’er and o’er.
[Pg 196]
I threw the door and the window wide;
Sun and the touch of the breeze and then—
“Ah, were you expecting me, dear?” she cried,
And here was April come back again.
Theodosia Garrison
The Immortal
Spring has come up from the South again,
With soft mists in her hair,
And a warm wind in her mouth again,
And budding everywhere.
Spring has come up from the South again,
And her skies are azure fire,
And around her is the awakening
Of all the world’s desire.
Spring has come up from the South again,
And dreams are in her eyes,
And music is in her mouth again
Of love, the never-wise.
Spring has come up from the South again,
And bird and flower and bee
Know that she is their life and joy—
And immortality!
Cale Young Rice
Spring
Isaid in my heart, “I am sick of four walls and a ceiling.
I have need of the sky.
I have business with the grass.
[Pg 197]
I will up and get me away where the hawk is wheeling,
Lone and high,
And the slow clouds go by.
I will get me away to the waters that glass
The clouds as they pass,
To the waters that lie
Like the heart of a maiden aware of a doom drawing nigh
And dumb for sorcery of impending joy.
I will get me away to the woods.
Spring, like a huntsman’s boy,
Halloos along the hillsides and unhoods
The falcon in my will.
The dogwood calls me, and the sudden thrill
That breaks in apple blooms down country roads
Plucks me by the sleeve and nudges me away.
The sap is in the boles today,
And in my veins a pulse that yearns and goads.”
When I got to the woods, I found out
What the Spring was about,
With her gypsy ways,
And her heart ablaze,
Coming up from the South
With the wander-lure of witch songs in her mouth.
For the sky
Stirred and grew soft and swimming as a lover’s eye
As she went by;
The air
Made love to all it touched, as if its care
Were all to spare;
The earth
Prickled with lust of birth;
The woodland streams
Babbled the incoherence of the thousand dreams
Wherewith the warm sun teems.
[Pg 198]
And out of the frieze
Of the chestnut trees
I heard
The sky and the fields and the thickets find voice in a bird.
The goldenwing—hark!
How he drives his song
Like a golden nail
Through the hush of the air!
I thrill to his cry in the leafage there;
I respond to the new life mounting under the bark.
I shall not be long
To follow
With eft and bulrush, bee and bud and swallow,
On the old trail.
Spring in the world!
And all things are made new!
There was never a mote that whirled
In the nebular morn,
There was never a brook that purled
Where the hills were born,
There was never a leaf uncurled—
Not the first that grew—
Nor a bee-flight hurled,
Nor a bird-note skirled,
Nor a cloud-wisp swirled
In the depth of the blue,
More alive and afresh and impromptu, more thoughtless and certain and free,
More a-shout with the glee
Of the Unknown new-burst on the wonder, than here, than here,
In the re-wrought sphere
Of the new-born year—
Now, now,
[Pg 199]
When the greenlet sings on the red-bud bough
Where the blossoms are whispering “I and thou”—“I and thou,”
And a lass at the turn looks after a lad with a dawn on her brow,
And the world is just made—now!
Spring in the heart!
With her pinks and pearls and yellows!
Spring, fellows,
And we too feel the little green leaves a-start
Across the bare-twigged winter of the mart.
The campus is reborn in us today;
The old grip stirs our hearts with new-old joy;
Again bursts bonds for madcap holiday
The eternal boy.
Richard Hovey
Blind
The Spring blew trumpets of color;
Her Green sang in my brain—
I heard a blind man groping
“Tap—tap” with his cane;
I pitied him in his blindness;
But can I boast, “I see”?
Perhaps there walks a spirit
Close by, who pities me,—
A spirit who hears me tapping
The five-sensed cane of mind
Amid such unguessed glories—
That I am worse than blind.
Harry Kemp
[Pg 200]
Spring Song
Make me over, mother April,
When the sap begins to stir!
When thy flowery hand delivers
All the mountain-prisoned rivers,
And thy great heart beats and quivers
To revive the days that were,
Make me over, mother April,
When the sap begins to stir!
Take my dust and all my dreaming,
Count my heart-beats one by one,
Send them where the winters perish;
Then some golden noon re-cherish
And restore them in the sun,
Flower and scent and dust and dreaming,
With their heart-beats every one.
Set me in the urge and tide-drift
Of the streaming hosts a-wing!
Breast of scarlet, throat of yellow,
Raucous challenge, wooings mellow—
Every migrant is my fellow,
Making northward with the spring.
Loose me in the urge and tide-drift
Of the streaming hosts a-wing!
Shrilling pipe or fluting whistle,
In the valleys come again;
Fife of frog and call of tree-toad,
All my brothers, five or three-toed,
With their revel no more vetoed,
Making music in the rain,
[Pg 201]
Shrilling pipe or fluting whistle,
In the valleys come again.
Make me of thy seed to-morrow,
When the sap begins to stir!
Tawny light-foot, sleepy bruin,
Bright-eyes in the orchard ruin,
Gnarl the good life goes askew in,
Whisky-jack or tanager,—
Make me anything to-morrow,
When the sap begins to stir!
Make me even (How do I know?)
Like my friend the gargoyle there;
It may be the heart within him
Swells that doltish hands should pin him
Fixed forever in mid-air.
Make me even sport for swallows,
Like the soaring gargoyle there!
Give me the old clue to follow,
Through the 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!
[Pg 202]
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!
[Pg 203]
Let me taste the old immortal
Indolence of life once more;
Not recalling or 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!
Bliss Carman
The Sweet, Low Speech
Of The Rain
It is pleasant to lie in the gloaming
When the autumn is on the wane,
And the careful, rejoicing reaper
Has gathered and stored his grain,
[Pg 204]
And hear at the doors and the windows
The sweet, low speech of the rain.
To put by the thought of the sailor
Far out on the storm-rocked main,
Where the fierce waves leap and struggle.
Like beasts in passionate pain,
And lie by the hearth and listen
To the sweet, low speech of the rain.
Ah, May has the burst of the blossom,
And the red of the willow vein,
And the glad uplift of the flowers
That lead in the fragrant train;
But nothing so dear as the sweet, low
Speech of the autumn rain.
July has the rose and the purple,
And the sunset’s golden stain
On the river that draws thro’ the valley
A glittering, wave-linked chain;
But never this lyrical, tremulous,
Sweet, low speech of the rain.
Each heart knows the joy of the winter,
The drift of the snow on the plain,
The book and the charm of the fireside,
The icicles fringing the pane;
But ah, for the faltering, pausing,
Sweet, low speech of the rain.
Old friends of my heart come to-morrow,
Remembrance, Regret, and Pain,
But to-night I will lie in the gloaming
And be lulled by the lure of the rain—And
[Pg 205]
the rhythmical, lyrical, rhyming,
Sweet, low speech of the rain.
Ella Higginson
Early Spring
Once more the Heavenly Power
Makes all things new,
And domes the red-plowed hills
With loving blue;
The blackbirds have their wills,
The throstles too.
Opens a door in Heaven;
From skies of glass
A Jacob’s ladder falls
On greening grass,
And o’er the mountain-walls
Young angels pass.
Before them fleets the shower,
And burst the buds,
And shine the level lands,
And flash the floods;
The stars are from their hands
Flung through the woods,
The woods with living airs
How softly fanned,
Light airs from where the deep,
All down the sand,
Is breathing in his sleep,
Heard by the land.
[Pg 206]
O, follow, leaping blood,
The season’s lure!
O heart, look down and up,
Serene, secure,
Warm as the crocus cup,
Like snow-drops pure!
Past, Future glimpse and fade
Through some slight spell,
A gleam from yonder vale,
Some far blue fell,
And sympathies, how frail,
In sound and smell!
Till at thy chuckled note,
Thou twinkling bird,
The fairy fancies range,
And, lightly stirred,
Ring little bells of change
From word to word.
For now the Heavenly Power
Makes all things new,
And thaws the cold, and fills
The flower with dew;
The blackbirds have their wills,
The poets too.
Alfred Tennyson
Spring
Spring, with that nameless pathos in the air
Which dwells with all things fair,
[Pg 207]
Spring, with her golden suns and silver rain,
Is with us once again.
Out in the lonely woods the jasmine burns
Its fragrant lamps, and turns
Into a royal court with green festoons
The banks of dark lagoons.
In the deep heart of every forest tree
The blood is all aglee,
And there’s a look about the leafless bowers
As if they dreamed of flowers.
Yet still on every side we trace the hand
Of Winter in the land,
Save where the maple reddens on the lawn,
Flushed by the season’s dawn;
Or where, like those strange semblances we find
That age to childhood bind,
The elms put on, as if in Nature’s scorn,
The brown of Autumn corn.
As yet the turf is dark, although you know
That, not a span below,
A thousand germs are groping through the gloom,
And soon will burst their tomb.
Already, here and there, on frailest stems
Appear some azure gems,
Small as might deck, upon a gala day
The forehead of a fay.
In gardens you may note amid the dearth,
The crocus breaking earth;
[Pg 208]
And near the snowdrop’s tender white and green,
The violet in its screen.
But many gleams and shadows needs must pass
Along the budding grass,
And weeks go by, before the enamored South
Shall kiss the rose’s mouth.
Still there’s a sense of blossoms yet unborn
In the sweet airs of morn;
One almost looks to see the very street
Grow purple at his feet.
At times a fragrant breeze comes floating by,
And brings, you know not why,
A feeling as when eager crowds await
Before a palace gate
Some wondrous pageant; and you scarce would start,
If from a beech’s heart
A blue-eyed Dryad, stepping forth, should say,
“Behold me! I am May!”
Henry Timrod
April, April
April, April,
Laugh thy girlish laughter;
Then, the moment after,
Weep thy girlish tears,
April, that mine ears
Like a lover greetest,
[Pg 209]
If I tell thee, sweetest,
All my hopes and fears.
April, April,
Laugh thy golden laughter,
But, the moment after,
Weep thy golden tears!
William Watson
April Rain
It is not raining rain for me,
It’s raining daffodils;
In every dimpled drop I see
Wild flowers on the hills.
The clouds of gray engulf the day
And overwhelm the town;
It is not raining rain to me,
It’s raining roses down.
It is not raining rain to me,
But fields of clover bloom,
Where any buccaneering bee
Can find a bed and room.
A health unto the happy,
A fig for him who frets!
It is not raining rain to me,
It’s raining violets.
Robert Loveman
[Pg 210]
April
An altered look about the hills;
A Tyrian light the village fills;
A wider sunrise in the dawn;
A deeper twilight on the lawn;
A print of a vermilion foot;
A purple finger on the slope;
A flippant fly upon the pane;
A spider at his trade again;
An added strut in chanticleer;
A flower expected everywhere;
An axe shrill singing in the woods;
Fern-odors on untravelled roads,—
All this, and more I cannot tell,
A furtive look you know as well,
And Nicodemus’ mystery
Receives its annual reply.
Emily Dickinson
April Morning
Iwould spend a morning
With an April apple tree,
Speaking to it softly
And laughing out in glee.
All the summer sunshine
And all the winter moon
Are shining in the blossoms
That will be gone so soon.
[Pg 211]
I will spend a morning
With a friendly apple tree,
Hearing many secrets
That it will tell to me.
I will take a morning
To drink the beauty in;
I will take a morning—
But how shall I begin?
George Elliston
May-Lure
How the heart pulls at its tether
In the magic warm spring weather!
How the blood leaps in its courses
When the deep ebullient forces
Break the bosom brown of earth!
It is worth
All a man can scrape or squander
Just to idle, just to wander
Forth from trade, away from duty,
Revelling in all the beauty
And the glamour of the May.
Who to-day
Cares a fig for any other
Thought save this: The earth, great mother,
Has turned kind, has banished gloom and dole;
Music, that audient outlet for the soul,
Comes in, and grief goes out, and life is whole.
Richard Burton
[Pg 212]
Sunrise
Day!
Faster and more fast,
O’er night’s brim, day boils at last:
Boils, pure gold, o’er the cloud-cup’s brim
Where spurting and suppressed it lay,
For not a froth-flake touched the rim
Of yonder gap in the solid gray
Of the eastern cloud, an hour away;
But forth one wavelet, then another, curled,
Till the whole sunrise, not to be suppressed,
Rose, reddened, and its seething breast
Flickered in bounds, grew gold, then overflowed the world.
Robert Browning
The Throstle
“Summer is coming, summer is coming,
I know it, I know it, I know it.
Light again, leaf again, life again, love again,”
Yes, my wild little Poet.
Sing the new year in under the blue.
Last year you sang it as gladly.
“New, new, new, new!” Is it then so new
That you should carol so madly?
“Love again, song again, nest again, young again,”
Inconsistencies in poem titles and author names corrected. However,
inconsistencies in the Copyright Acknowledgements section remain
unchanged.
Inconsistencies in section titles normalized.
Missing footnote anchors added. The footnote text for The Return is
missing in the original text, so its footnote anchor has been removed
in this edition.
Obvious typos corrected, particularly in incorrect/missing periods and
commas.
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