More Songs From Vagabondia

Bliss Carman
Richard Hovey

• JONGLEURS
• EARTH'S LYRIC
• THE WOOD-GOD
• A FAUN'S SONG
• QUINCE TO LILAC
• AN EASTER MARKET
• DAISIES
• THE MOCKING-BIRD
• KARLENE
• KARLENE
• CONCERNING KAVIN
• KAVIN AGAIN
• ACROSS THE TABLE
• BARNEY MCGEE
• THE SEA GYPSY
• SPEECH AND SILENCE
• SECRETS
• THE FIRST JULEP
• A STEIN SONG
• THE UNSAINTING OF KAVIN
• IN THE WAYLAND WILLOWS
• WHEN I WAS TWENTY
• IN A SILENCE
• THE BATHER
• NOCTURNE: IN ANJOU
• NOCTURNE: IN PROVENCE
• JUNE NIGHT IN WASHINGTON
• A SONG FOR MARNA
• SEPTEMBER WOODLANDS
• NANCIBEL
• A VAGABOND SONG
• THREE OF A KIND
• WOOD-FOLK LORE
• AT MICHAELMAS
• THE MOTHER OF POETS
• A GOOD-BY
• IN A COPY OF BROWNING
• SHAKESPEARE HIMSELF
• AT THE ROAD-HOUSE
• VERLAINE
• DISTILLATION

And ever with the vanguard
The vagrant singers come
The gamins of the city
Who dance before the drum

JONGLEURS.

What is the stir in the street?
Hurry of feet!
And after,
A sound as of pipes and of tabers!

Men of the conflicts and labors,
Struggling and shifting and shoving,
Pushing and pounding your neighbors,
Fighting for leeway for laughter,
Toiling for leisure for loving!
Hark, through the window and up to the rafter,
Madder and merrier,
Deeper and verier,
Sweeter, contrarier,
Dafter and dafter,
A song arises,--
A thrill, an intrusion,
A reel, an illusion,
A rapture, a crisis
Of bells in the air!

Ay, up from your work and look out of the window!
"Who are the newcomers, Arab or Hindoo?
Persians, or Japs, or the children of Isis?"
--Guesses, surmises--
Forth with you, fare
Down in the street to draw nearer and stare!
Come from your palaces, come from your hovels!
Lay down your ledgers, your picks and your shovels,
Your trowels and bricks,
Hammers and nails,
Scythes and flails,
Bargains and sales,
And the trader's tricks,
Deals, overreachings,
Worries and griefs,
Teachings and preachings,
Boluses, briefs,
Writs and attachments,
Quarterings, hatchments,
Clans and cognomens,
Comments and scholia,
(World's melancholia)--
Cast them aside, and good riddance to rubbish!
Here at the street-corner, hearken, a strain,
Rough and off-hand and a bit rub-a-dub-ish,
Gives us a taste of the life we'd attain.

Who are they, what are they, whence have they come to us?
Where will they go.when their singing is done?
What is the garb they wear, tattered and sumptuous,
Faded with days and superb in the sun?
What are they singing of?
Hush!
... There's a ringing of
Delicate chimes;
And the blush
Of a veiled bride morning
Beats in the rhymes.
Listen!
Out of the merriment,
Clear as the glisten
Of dew on the brier,
A silver warning!
Sudden, a dare--
Lyric experiment--
Up like a lark in the air,
Higher and higher and higher,
The song shoots out of our blunder
Of thought to the blue sky of wonder,
And broken strains only fall down
Like pearls on the roofs of the town.

Somebody says they have come from the moon,
Seen with their eyes Eldorado,
Sat in the Bo-tree's shadow,
Wandered at noon
In the valleys of Van,
Tented in Lebanon, tarried in Ophir,
Last year in Tartary piped for the Khan.
Now it's the song of a lover;
Now it's the lilt of a loafer,--
Under the trees in a midsummer noon,
Dreaming the haze into isles to discover,
Beating the silences into a croon;
Soon
Up from the marshes a fall of the plover!
Out from the cover
A flurry of quail!
Down from the height where the slow hawks hover,
The thin far ghost of a hail!
And near, and near,
Throbbing and tingling,--
With a human cheer
In the earth-song mingling,--
Mirth and carousal,
Wooing, espousal,
Clinking of glasses
And laughter of lasses--
And the wind in the garden stoops down as it passes
To play with the hair
Of the loveliest there,
And the wander-lust catches the will in its snare;
Hill-wind and spray-lure,
Call of the heath;
Dare in the teeth
Of the balk and the failure;
The clasp and the linger
Of loosening finger,
Loth to dissever;
Thrill of the comrade heart to its fellow
Through droughts that sicken and blasts that bellow
From purple furrow to harvest yellow,
Now and forever.
How our feet itch to keep time to their measure!
How our hearts lift to the lilt of their song!
Let the world go, for a day's royal pleasure!
Not every summer such waifs come along.

Now they are off to the inn;
Hear the clean ring of their laughter!
Cool as a hill-brook after
The beat of the noon sets in!
Gentlemen even in jollity--
Certainly people of quality!--
Waifs and estrays no less,
Roofless and penniless,
They are the wayside strummers
Whose lips are man's renown,
Those wayward brats of Summer's
Who stroll from town to town;
Spendthrift of life, they ravish
The days of an endless store,
And ever the more they lavish
The heap of the hoard is more.
For joy and love and vision
Are alive and breed and stay
When dust shall hold in derision
The misers of a day.

EARTH'S LYRIC.

April. You hearken, my fellow,
Old slumberer down in my heart?
There's a whooping of ice in the rivers;
The sap feels a start.

The snow-melted torrents are brawling;
The hills, orange-misted and blue,
Are touched with the voice of the rainbird
Unsullied and new.

The houses of frost are deserted,
Their slumber is broken and done,
And empty and pale are the portals
Awaiting the sun.

The bands of Arcturus are slackened;
Orion goes forth from his place
On the slopes of the night, leading homeward
His hound from the chase.

The Pleiades weary and follow
The dance of the ghostly dawn;
The revel of silence is

THE WOOD-GOD.

Brother, lost brother!
Thou of mine ancient kin!
Thou of the swift will that no ponderings smother!
The dumb life in me fumbles out to the shade
Thou lurkest in.
In vain--evasive ever through the glade
Departing footsteps fail;
And only where the grasses have been pressed,
Or by snapped twigs I follow a fruitless trail.
So--give o'er the quest!
Sprawl on the roots and moss!
Let the lithe garter squirm across my throat!
Let the slow clouds and leaves above me float
Into mine eyeballs and across,--
Nor think them further! Lo, the marvel! now,
Thou whom my soul desireth, even thou
Sprawl'st by my side, who fled'st at my pursuit.
I hear thy fluting; at my shoulder there
I see the sharp ears through the tangled hair,
And birds and bunnies at thy music mute.

A FAUN'S SONG.

Cool! cool! cool!
Cool and sweet
The feel of the moss at my feet!
And sweet and cool
The touch of the wind, of the wind!

Cool wind out of the blue,
At the touch of you
A little wave crinkles and flows
All over me down to my toes.

"Coo-loo! Coo-loo!"
Hear the doves in the tree-tops croon.
"Coo-loo! Coo-loo!"
Love comes soon.

"June! June!"
The veery sings,
Sings and sings,
"June! June!"--
A pretty tune!

Wind with your weight of perfume,
Bring me the bluebells' bloom!

QUINCE TO LILAC: To G. H.

Dear Lilac, how enchanting
To hear of you this way!
The Man who comes a-mouching
To visit me each day

Says you too have a lover
Far lovelier than I.
And from his rapt description,
She loves you gloriously.

The Man prowls out each morning
To see if spring's begun.
What infinite amusement
These creatures offer one!

He asks me such conundrums
As no one ever heard:
The name of April's father,
The trail of every bird,

What keeps me warm in winter,
Who wakes me up in time,
And why procrastination
Is such a fearful crime.

And yet, who knows? He may be
Our equal ages hence--
With such pathetic glimmers
Of weird intelligence!

But this your blessed alien,
Why strays she roving here?
Was Orpheus not her brother,
Persephone her peer?

Was she not once a dryad
Whom Syrinx lulled to sleep
Beside the Dorian water,
And still her eyelids keep

The glad unperished secret
From centuries of joy,
And memories of the morning
When Helen sailed for Troy?

Is her name Gertrude, Kitty,
Hypatia, or what?
I seem to half remember,
And yet have quite forgot.

That soft Hellenic laughter!
I marvel you don't make
An effort to be early
In budding for her sake.

Just fancy hearing daily
That velvet voice of hers!
How do you quell the riot
Of sap her coming stirs?

Perhaps she puts her face up,
(Dear Charity she is!)
For messages of summer
And better worlds than this.

You cannot blush, poor Lilac;
It is not in your race.
I simply should go crimson,
If I were in your place.

Do tell her all your secrets!
The Man declares she knows
Better than any mortal
The wonder-trick of prose.

Our prose, I mean,--how beauty
Appears to you and me;
The truth that seems so simple,
Which they call poetry.

They put it down in writing
And label it with tags,
The funny conscious people
Who mask in colored rags!

They have a thing called science,
With phrases strange and pat.
My dear, can you imagine
Intelligence like that?

And when they first discover
That yellows are not greens,
They pucker up their foreheads
And ponder what it means.

And then those cave-like places,
Churches and Capitols,
Where they all come together
Like troops of talking dolls,

To govern, as they term it,
(It's really very odd!)
And have what they call worship
Of something they call God.

But Kitty, or whatever
May be her tender name,
Is more like us. She guesses
What sets the year aflame.

She knows beyond her senses;
Do tell her all you can!
The funny people need it,--
At least, so says The Man.

Good-by, dear. I must idle.
Sweet suns and happy rains!
How nice to have these humans
With their inventive brains,--

Their little scraps of paper!
They certainly evince
Remarkable discernment.
Your ever loving Quince.

AN EASTER MARKET.

Today, through your Easter market
In the lazy Southern sun,
I strolled with hands in pockets
Past the flower-stalls one by one.

Indolent, dreamy, ready
For anything to amuse,
Shyfoot out for a ramble
In his oldest hat and shoes.

Roses creamy and yellow,
Azaleas crimson and white,
And the flaky fresh carnations
My Orient of delight,--

Masses and banks of blossom
That dazzle and summon the eye,
Till the buyers are half bewildered
To know what they want. Not I.

Who would not rather be artist
And slip through the crowd unseen
To gather it all in a picture
And guess what the faces mean?

So down through the chaffering darkies
I pass to the sidewalk's end,
Through the smiling gingham bonnets
With their small farm-stuff to vend.

When, hello! my dreamer, sudden
As call at the dead of night,
What sets your pulses a-quiver,
What sets your fancy alight?

Sure of it! Mayflowers, mayflowers,
Scent of the North in spring!
Out in the vernal distance,
Heart of me, whither a-wing?

"Give me some!" Clutch the first handful,
Hungering rover of earth!
How I devour and kiss them,
Beauties that brought me to birth,

Away in the great north country,
The land of the lonely sun,
Where God has few for his fellows,
And the wolves of the snowdrift run.

Once more to the frost-bound valley
Comes April with rain in her jar;
I can hear the vesper sparrow
Under the silver star.

And many and dear and gracious
Are the dreams that walk at my side
From the land of the lingering shadows,
As out of the throng I stride.

DAISIES.

Over the shoulders and slopes of the dune
I saw the white daisies go down to the sea,
A host in the sunshine, an army in June,
The people God sends us to set our heart free.

The bobolinks rallied them up from the dell,
The orioles whistled them out of the wood;
And all of their singing was, "Earth, it is well!"
And all of their dancing was, "Life, thou art good!"

THE MOCKING-BIRD.

Hear! hear! hear!
Listen! the word
Of the mocking-bird!
Hear! hear! hear!
I will make all clear;
I will let you know
Where the footfalls go
That through the thicket and over the hill
Allure, allure.
How the bird-voice cleaves
Through the weft of leaves
With a leap and a thrill
Like the flash of a weaver's shuttle, swift and sudden and sure!

And la, he is gone--even while I turn
The wisdom of his runes to learn.
He knows the mystery of the wood,
The secret of the solitude;
But he will not tell, he will not tell,
For all he promises so well.

KARLENE.

Word of a little one born in the West,--
How like a sea-bird it comes from the sea,
Out of the league-weary waters' unrest
Blown with white wings, for a token, to me!

Blown with a skriel and a flurry of plumes
(Sea-spray and flight-rapture whirled in a gleam!)
Here for a sign of the comrade that looms
Large in the mist of my love as I dream.

He with the heart of an old violin,
Vibrant at every least stir in the place,
Lyric of woods where the thrushes begin,
Wave-questing wanderer, still for a space,--

What will the child of his be (so I muse),
Wood-flower, sea-flower, star-flower rare?
Worlds here to choose from, and which will she choose,
She whose first world is an armsweep of air?

Baby Karlene, you are wondering now
Why you can't reach the great moon that you see
Just at your hand on the edge of the bough
That waves in the window-pane--how can it be?

All your world yet hardly lies out of reach
Of ten little fingers and ten little toes.
You are a seed for the sky there to teach
(And the sun and the wind and the rain) as it grows.

Just a green leaf piercing up to the day,
Pale fleck of June to come, just to be seen
Through the rough crumble of rubble and clay
Lifting its loveliness, dawn-child, Karlene!

Fragile as fairycraft, dew-dream of love,--
Never a clod that has marred the slim stalk,
Never a stone but its frail fingers move,
Bent on the blue sky and nothing can balk!

Blue sky and wind-laughters, that is thy dream.
Ah the brave days when thy leafage shall toss
High where gold noondays and sunsets a-stream
Mix with its moving and kiss it across.

There the great clouds shall go lazily by,
Coo! thee with shadows and dazzle with shine,
Drench thee with rain-guerdons, bless thee with sky,
Till all the knowledge of earth shall be thine.

Wind from the ice-floe and wind from the palm,
Wind from the mountains and wind from the lea--
How they will sing thee of tempest and calm!
How they will lure thee with tales of the sea!

What will you be in that summer, Karlene?
Apple-tree, cherry-tree, lily, or corn?
Red rose or yellow rose, gray leaf or green?
Which will you choose now the year's at its morn?

Somewhere even now in thy heart is the will,--
"I shall be Golden Rod, slender and tall--
I shall be Pond Lily, secret and still--
I shall be Sweetbriar, Queen of them all--

"I shall give shade for the weary to rest--
I shall grow flax for the naked to wear--
Figs for a feast and all comers to guest--
Wreaths that girls twine in the laugh of their hair--

"Ivy for scholars and myrtle for lovers,
Laurel for conquerors, poets, and kings--
Broad-spreading beech-boughs whose benison covers
Clamor of bird-notes and flutter of wings--

"I shall rise tall as an elm in my grace--
I shall be clothed as catalpa is clad--
Poets shall crown me with lyrics of praise--
Lovers for lure of my blossoms go mad!"

Which shall it be, baby? Guess you at all?
Only I know in the lull of the year
You have said now where your choosing shall fall,
Only you have not yet heard yourself, dear.

So, like a mocking-bird, up in the trees,
I watching wondering where you have grown,
Borrow a note from a birdfellow's glees,
Fittest to sing you, and make it my own.

Only I know as I wonder, Karlene,
Singing up here where you think me a star,
Heaven's still above me, and some one serene
Laughs in the blue sky and knows what you are.

KARLENE.

Good-morning, Karlene. It's a very
Fine beautiful world we are in.
Well, you do look as ripe as a berry;
And, pardon me, such a real chin!

And may I--Ah, thank you; the pleasure
Is mine; just one kiss by your ear!--
May I introduce myself as your
Most dutiful godfather, dear?

I have fumed, like champagne that is fizzy,
To pay my respects at your door.
But the publishers keep one so busy.
Forgive my not calling before!

Karlene, you're a very small lady
To venture so far all alone;
Especially into so shady
A place as this planet has grown.

When I now, my dear, was at your age,
When nobody tried to be rich,
But lived on high thinking and porridge
(And didn't know t' other from which!),

For a girl to go out unattended
Was considered "not only unwise
And improper--" Our grandmothers ended
By lifting to heaven their eyes.

And yet even now, though it's shocking
To slander these wonderful years,
I dare say an inch of black stocking
Could set all the world by the ears.

Black, mind you, not blue! It's a trifle;
But trifling in stockings won't do;
For love has an eye like a rifle
(His bandage is slipping askew).

But there! You are simply too charming.
No doubt you'll be modern enough
(Though the speed of the world is alarming)
To win with a delicate bluff,

As we say when we're raking the chips in,
On a hand that was not over strong--
But I see you are pursing your lips in;
Perhaps I am prating too long.

Anyhow you'll be learned in isms,
And talk pterodactyls in French,
And know polyhedrons from prisms,--
Though you may not know how to retrench.

You will fall out of love with digamma
To fall in again with Delsarte;
You will make a new Syriac grammar,
And know all the popes off by heart.

What Socrates said to Xantippe
When the lash of

CONCERNING KAVIN.

When Kavin comes back from the barber,
Although he no longer is young,
One cheek is as soft as his heart,
And the other as smooth as his tongue. '

KAVIN AGAIN.

It is not anything he says,
It's just his presence and his smile,
The blarney of his silences
That cocker and beguile.

ACROSS THE TABLE. To A. L. L.

Here's to you, Arthur! You and I
Have seen a lot of stormy weather,
Since first we clinked cups on the sly
At school together.

The winds of fate have had their will
And blown our crafts so far apart
We hardly knew if either still
Were on the chart.

But now I know the love of man
Is more than time or space or fate,
And laugh to scorn the powers that ban,
With you for mate.

It's good to have you sitting by,
Old man, to prove the world no botch,
To shame the devil with your eye
And pass the Scotch.

BARNEY McGEE.

Barney McGee, there's no end of good luck in you,
Will-o'-the-wisp, with a flicker of Puck in you,
Wild as a bull-pup and all of his pluck in you,--
Let a man tread on your coat and he'll see!--
Eyes like the lakes of Killarney for clarity,
Nose that turns up without any vulgarity,
Smile like a cherub, and hair that is carroty,--
Wow, you're a rarity, Barney McGee!
Mellow as Tarragon,
Prouder than Aragon--
Hardly a paragon,
You will agree--
Here's all that's fine to you!
Books and old wine to you!
Girls be divine to you,
Barney McGee!

Lucky the day when I met you unwittingly,
Dining where vagabonds came and went flittingly.
Here's some Barbera to drink it befittingly,
That day at Silvio's, Barney McGee!
Many's the time we have quaffed our Chianti there,
Listened to Silvio quoting us Dante there,--
Once more to drink Nebiolo spumante there,
How we'd pitch Pommery into the sea!
There where the gang of us
Met ere Rome rang of us,
They had the hang of us
To a degree.
How they would trust to you!
That was but just to you.
Here's o'er their dust to you,
Barney McGee!

Barney McGee, when you're sober you scintillate,
But when you're in drink you're the pride of the intellect;
Divil a one of us ever came in till late,
Once at the bar where you happened to be--
Every eye there like a spoke in you centering,
You with your eloquence, blarney, and bantering--
All Vagabondia shouts at your entering,
King of the Tenderloin, Barney McGee!
There's no satiety
In your society
With the variety
Of your esprit.
Here's a long purse to you,
And a great thirst to you!
Fate be no worse to you,
Barney McGee!

Och, and the girls whose poor hearts you deracinate,
Whirl and bewilder and flutter and fascinate!
Faith, it's so killing you are, you assassinate,--
Murder's the word for you, Barney McGee!
Bold when they're sunny and smooth when they're showery,--
Oh, but the style of you, fluent and flowery!
Chesterfield's way, with a touch of the Bowery!
How would they silence you, Barney machree?
Naught can your gab allay,
Learned as Rabelais
(You in his abbey lay
Once on the spree).
Here's to the smile of you,
(Oh, but the guile of you!)
And a long while of you,
Barney McGee!

Facile with phrases of length and Latinity,
Like honorificabilitudinity,
Where is the maid could resist your vicinity,
Wiled by the impudent grace of your plea?
Then your vivacity and pertinacity
Carry the day with the divil's audacity;
No mere veracity robs your sagacity
Of perspicacity, Barney McGee.
When all is new to them,
What will you do to them?
Will you be true to them?
Who shall decree?
Here's a fair strife to

THE SEA GYPSY.

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.

SPEECH AND SILENCE.

The words that pass from lip to lip
For souls still out of reach!
A friend for that companionship
That's deeper than all speech!

SECRETS.

Three secrets that never were said:
The stir of the sap in the spring,
The desire of a man to a maid,
The urge of a poet to sing.

THE FIRST JULEP.

I love the lazy Southern spring,
The way she melts around a chap
And lets the great magnolias fling
Their languid petals in his lap.

I love to travel down half-way
And meet her coming up the earth,
With hurdy-gurdy men who play
And make the children dance for mirth.

But best of all I love to steer
For quiet corners not too far,
Where the first juleps reappear
With fresh green mint behind the bar.

P. S. Perhaps you'll think it queer,
But I do not dislike a hint
To let the juleps disappear
And stick my nose into the mint.

A STEIN SONG.

Give a rouse, then, in the Maytime
For a life that knows no fear!
Turn night-time into daytime
With the sunlight of good cheer!
For it's always fair weather
When good fellows get together,
With a stein on the table and a good song ringing clear.

When the wind comes up from Cuba
And the birds are on the wing,
And our hearts are patting juba
To the banjo of the spring,
Then it's no wonder whether
The boys will get together,
With a stein on the table and a cheer for everything.

For we're all frank-and-twenty
When the spring is in the air;
And we've faith and hope a-plenty,
And we've life and love to spare;
And it's birds of a feather
When we all get together,
With a stein on the table and a heart without a care.

For we know the world is glorious,
And the goal a golden thing,
And that God is not censorious
When his children have their fling;
And life slips its tether
When the boys get together,
With a stein on the table in the fellowship of spring.

THE UNSAINTING OF KAVIN.

Saint Kavin was a gentleman,
He came from Tipperary;
And woman was the only thing
That ever made him scary.

For Kavin was a tender youth,
And he was very simple;
He feared the wiles of maiden smiles,
And fainted at a dimple.

But when Kathleen at seventeen
Came down the street one morning,
The luck of man came over him
And took him without warning.

Afraid to meet a foolish fate
By green sea or by dry land,
He fled away without delay
And sought a desert island.

But even there he felt despair;
For happiness is only
The hope of doing something else;
And he was very lonely.

He vowed to lead a life of prayer
Because that he had lost her;
And every time he thought of her
He said a Pater noster.

Yet hard it is for man to change
The less love for the greater;
And every time he reached Amen,
He must go back to Pater.

And so he grew a year or two
Disconsolate and holy,
While friends he'd known long since had grown
Papas and roly-poly.

Until one day, one blessed day,
A-moping like a Hindoo,
He saw Kathleen in mournful mien
A-passing by his window.

He threw away his rosary,
His Paters and his Aves;
For love is stronger than the wind
That wafts a thousand navies.

The holy man went forth to war,
But not against the devil.
He led the maid within for shade,
And treated her most civil.

He gave her cakes, he gave her wine,
He set his best before her;
And then invited her to dine--
Thenceforth--with her adorer.

Her little head went round for joy;
She tried to kick the rafter:
So Kavin was a saint no more,
And happy ever after.

IN THE WAYLAND WILLOWS.

Once I met a soncy maid,
Soncy maid, soncy maid,
Once I met a soncy maid
In the Wayland willows.

All her hair was goldy brown,
Goldy brown, goldy brown,
In the sun a single braid
To her waist hung down.

Honey bees, honey bees,
You are roving fellows!
Idly went the doxy wind
In the Wayland willows.

There I caught her eye a-dance,
Through the catkins downy.
"Heigho, Brownie-pate," said I;
"Heigho," said my Brownie.

Then I kissed my soncy maid,
Soncy maid, soncy maid,
Kissed and kissed my soncy maid
In the Wayland willows.

Goldy eyes and goldy hair,
And little gypsy bosom,
Chin and lip and shoulder tip,
Blossom after blossom!

Hand in hand and cheek by cheek
All the morning weather!
How the yellow butterflies
Danced and winked together!

Till the day went down the hill
Where the shadows waded.
"Heigho, Soncy!" "Heigho, me!"
Then I did as day did.

All her tousled beauty bright
And teasing as before,
I left