Oh, I am weary, weary, weary
      Of Pan and oaten quills
     And little songs that, from the dictionary,
      Learn lore of streams and hills,
     Of studied laughter, mocking what is merry,
      And calculated thrills!

     Are we grown old and past the time of singing?
      Is ardor quenched in art
     Till art is but a formal figure, bringing
      A money-measured heart,
     Procrustean cut, and, with old echoes, ringing
      Its bells about the mart?

     The race moves on, and leaves no wildernesses
      Where rugged voices cry;
     It reads its prayer, and with set phrase it blesses
      The souls of men who die,
     And step by even step its rank progresses,
      An army marshalled by.

     If it be better so, that Babel noises,
      Losing all course and ken,
     And grief that wails and gladness that rejoices
      Should never wake again
     To shock a world of modulated voices
      And mediocre men,

     Then he is blest who wears the painted feather
      And may not turn about
     To dusks when muses romped the dewy heather
      In unrestricted rout
     And dawns when, if the stars had sung together,
      The sons of God would shout!

     Green moss will creep
     Along the shady graves where we shall sleep.

     Each year will bring
     Another brood of birds to nest and sing.

     At dawn will go
     New ploughmen to the fields we used to know.

     Night will call home
     The hunter from the hills we loved to roam.

     She will not ask,
     The milkmaid, singing softly at her task,

     Nor will she care
     To know if I were brave or you were fair.

     No one will think
     What chalice life had offered us to drink,

     When from our clay
     The sun comes back to kiss the snow away.

     Her brown hair knew no royal crest,
      No gems nor jeweled charms,
     No roses her bright cheek caressed,
      No lilies kissed her arms.
     In simple, modest womanhood
      Clad, as was meet, in white,
     The fairest flower of all, she stood
      Amid the softest light.

     It had been worth a perilous quest
      To see the court she drew,—
     My rose, my gem, my royal crest,
      My lily moist with dew;
     Worth heaven, when, with farewells from each
      The gay throng let us be,
     To see her turn at last and reach
      Her white hands out to me.

     When summer's languor drugs my veins
      And fills with sleep the droning times,
     Like sluggish dreams among my brains,
      There runs the drollest sort of rhymes,
     Idle as clouds that stray through heaven
      And vague as if they were a myth,
     But in these rhymes is always given
      A health