Volume Iii Part 83 (1/2)

NIGHT FOR ADVENTURES

Sometimes when fragrant summer dusk comes in with scent of rose and musk And scatters from their sable husk the stars like yellow grain, Oh, then the ancient longing comes that lures me like a roll of drums To follow where the cricket strums his banjo in the lane.

And when the August moon comes up and like a shallow, silver cup Pours out upon the fields and roads her amber-colored beams, A leafy whisper mounts and calls from out the forest's moss grown halls To leave the city's somber walls and take the road of dreams.

A call that bids me rise and strip, and, naked all from toe to lip, To wander where the dewdrops drip from off the silent trees, And where the hairy spiders spin their nets of silver, fragile-thin, And out to where the fields begin, like down upon the breeze.

Into a silver pool to plunge, and like a great trout wheel and lunge Among the lily-bonnets and the stars reflected there; With face upturned to lie afloat, with moonbeams rippling round my throat, And from the slimy gra.s.ses plait a chaplet for my hair.

Then, leaping from my rustic bath, to take some winding meadow-path: Across the fields of aftermath to run with flying feet, And feel the dewdrop-weighted gra.s.s that bends beneath me as I pa.s.s, Where solemn trees in shadowy ma.s.s beyond the highway meet.

And, plunging deep within the woods, among the leaf-hung solitudes Where scarce one timid star intrudes into the breathless gloom, Go leaping down some fern-hid way to scare the rabbits in their play, And see the owl, a fantom gray, drift by on silent plume.

To fling me down at length and rest upon some damp and mossy nest, And hear the choir of surpliced frogs strike up a bubbling tune; And watch, above the dreaming trees, Orion and the Hyades And all the stars, like golden bees, around the lily-moon.

Then who can say if I have gone a-gipsying from dusk till dawn In company with fay and faun, where firefly-lanterns gleam?

And have I danced on cobwebs thin to Master Locust's mandolin-- Or I have spent the night in bed, and was it all a dream?

Victor Starbuck [1887-

SONG From ”The Way Of Perfect Love”

Something calls and whispers, along the city street, Through shrill cries of children and soft stir of feet, And makes my blood to quicken and makes my flesh to pine.

The mountains are calling; the winds wake the pine.

Past the quivering poplars that tell of water near The long road is sleeping, the white road is clear.

Yet scent and touch can summon, afar from brook and tree, The deep boom of surges, the gray waste of sea.

Sweet to dream and linger, in windless orchard close, On bright brows of ladies to garland the rose, But all the time are glowing, beyond this little world, The still light of planets and the star-swarms whirled.

Georgiana G.o.ddard King [1871-

THE VOORTREKKER

The gull shall whistle in his wake, the blind wave break in fire, He shall fulfill G.o.d's utmost will unknowing His desire; And he shall see old planets pa.s.s and alien stars arise, And give the gale his seaworn sail in shadow of new skies.

Strong l.u.s.t of gear shall drive him forth and hunger arm his hand To win his food from the desert rude, his foothold from the sand.

His neighbors' smoke shall vex his eyes, their voices break his rest, He shall go forth till South is North, sullen and dispossessed.

He shall desire loneliness, and his desire shall bring Hard on his heels a thousand wheels, a People, and a King; He shall come back in his own track, and by his scarce cooled camp; There shall he meet the roaring street, the derrick, and the stamp; There he shall blaze a nation's ways with hatchet and with brand, Till on his last-won wilderness an Empire's outposts stand!

Rudyard Kipling [1865-1936]

THE LONG TRAIL