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A Fragment
I WILL go out to grass with that old King, | |
| For I am weary of clothes and cooks. | |
| I long to lie along the banks of brooks, | |
| And watch the boughs above me sway and swing. | |
| Come, I will pluck off custom’s livery, | 5 |
| 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 the fox runs free, | 10 |
| Laugh for cool joy and sleep i’ the warm sun, | |
| And men will call me mad, like that old King. | |
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| For I am woodland-natured, and have made | |
| Dryads my bedfellows, | |
| And I have played | 15 |
| With the sleek Naiads in the splash of the pools | |
| And made a mock of gowned and trousered fools. | |
| Helen, none knows | |
| Better than thou how like a Faun I strayed. | |
| And I am half Faun now, and my heart goes | 20 |
| 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, | 25 |
| Where through the branches the slant rays | |
| Dapple with sunlight the leaf-matted ground, | |
| And the wind comes with blown vestures rustling after, | |
| And through the woven lattice of crisp sound | |
| A bird’s song lightens like a maiden’s face. | 30 |
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| O wildwood Helen, let them strive and fret, | |
| Those goggled men with their dissecting-knives! | |
| Let them in charnel-houses pass their lives | |
| And seek in death life’s secret! And let | |
| Those hard-faced worldlings prematurely old | 35 |
| Gnaw their thin lips with vain desire to get | |
| Portia’s fair fame or Lesbia’s carcanet, | |
| Or crown of Cæsar or Catullus, | |
| Apicius’ lampreys or Crassus’ gold! | |
| For these consider many things—but yet | 40 |
| By land or sea | |
| They shall not find the way to Arcady, | |
| The old home of the awful heart-dear Mother, | |
| Whereto child-dreams and long rememberings lull | |
| Far from the cares that overlay and smother | 45 |
| The memories of old woodland out-door mirth | |
| In the dim first life-burst centuries ago, | |
| The sense of the freedom and nearness of Earth— | |
| Nay, this they shall not know; | |
| For who goes thither, | 50 |
| Leaves all the cark and clutch of his soul behind, | |
| The doves denied and the serpents shrined, | |
| The hates that wax and the hopes that wither; | |
| Nor does he journey, seeking where it be, | |
| But wakes and finds himself in Arcady. | 55 |
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| Hist! there ’s a stir in the brush. | |
| Was it a face through the leaves? | |
| Back of the laurels a skurry and rush | |
| Hillward, then silence except for the thrush | |
| That throws one song from the dark of the bush | 60 |
| And is gone; and I plunge in the wood, and the swift soul cleaves | |
| Through the swirl and the flow of the leaves, | |
| As a swimmer stands with his white limbs bare to the sun | |
| For the space that a breath is held, and drops in the sea; | |
| And the undulant woodland folds round me, intimate, fluctuant, free, | 65 |
| Like the clasp and the cling of the waters, and the reach and the effort is done,— | |
| There is only the glory of living, exultant to be. | |
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| O goodly damp smell of the ground! | |
| O rough sweet bark of the trees! | |
| O clear sharp cracklings of sound! | 70 |
| O 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 wings? | |
| Did a man’s heart ever break | 75 |
| 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, | 80 |
| As the nuthatch there that clings to the tip of the twig | |
| And scolds at the wind that buffets too rudely its nest. | |
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| Oh, what is it breathes in the air? | |
| Oh, what is it touches my cheek? | |
| There ’s a sense of a presence that lurks in the branches. | 85 |
| But where? | |
| Is it far, is it far to seek? | |
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