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To R. H.
NOW the joys of the road are chiefly these: | |
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| 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, | 5 |
| Alluring up and enticing down | |
| From rippled water to dappled swamp, | |
| The outward eye, the quiet will, | |
| From purple glory to scarlet pomp; | |
| And the striding heart from hill to hill; | 10 |
| 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; | |
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| An open hand, an easy shoe, | 15 |
| 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; | 20 |
| 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?) | |
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| A hunger fit for the kings of the sea, | 25 |
| 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; | 30 |
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| A scrap of gossip at the ferry; | |
| A comrade neither glum nor merry, | |
| Asking nothing, revealing naught, | |
| But minting his words from a fund of thought, | |
| A keeper of silence eloquent, | 35 |
| Needy, yet royally well content, | |
| Of the mettled breed, yet abhorring strife, | |
| And full of the mellow juice of life, | |
| A taster of wine, with an eye for a maid, | |
| Never too bold and never afraid, | 40 |
| Never heart-whole, never heart-sick | |
| (These are the things I worship in Dick), | |
| No fidget and no reformer, just | |
| A calm observer of ought and must, | |
| A lover of books, but a reader of man, | 45 |
| 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. | 50 |
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| 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-wind, a light-o’-dream, | |
| Delusion afar, delight anear, | 55 |
| From morrow to morrow, from year to year, | |
| A jack-o’-lantern, a fairy fire, | |
| A dare, a bliss, and a desire! | |
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| The racy smell of the forest loam, | |
| When the stealthy, sad-heart leaves go home; | 60 |
| (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 | 65 |
| From stormy tumult to starry peace; | |
| With only another league to wend, | |
| And two brown arms at the journey’s end: | |
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| These are the joys of the open road— | |
| For him who travels without a load. | 70 |
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