Volume Iii Part 80 (1/2)
Dreaming of potential years When no day shall dawn in fears!
That's the Marna of my soul, Wander-bride of mine!
Richard Hovey [1864-1900]
THE SEA GIPSY
I am fevered with the sunset, I am fretful with the bay, For the wander-thirst is on me And my soul is in Cathay.
There's a schooner in the offing, With her topsails shot with fire, And my heart has gone aboard her For the Islands of Desire.
I must forth again to-morrow!
With the sunset I must be Hull down on the trail of rapture In the wonder of the Sea.
Richard Hovey [1864-1900]
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 gipsy blood astir; We must rise and-follow her, When from every hill of flame She calls and calls each vagabond by name.
Bliss Carman [1861-1929]
SPRING SONG
Make me over, Mother April, When the sap beings 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 recherish 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; 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, Whiskey-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!