_Wanderthirst_
Beyond the East the sunrise, beyond the West the sea,
And East and West the wanderthirst that will not let me be;
It works in me like madness, to bid me say good-bye;
For the seas call and the stars call, and oh! the call of the sky.
I know not where the white road runs, nor what the blue hills are,
But a man can have the Sun for friend, and for his guide a star;
And there’s no end of voyaging when once the voice is heard,
For the river calls and the road calls, and oh! the call of a bird!
Yonder the long horizon lies, and there by night and day
The old ships draw to home again, the young ships sail away;
And come I may, but go I must, and, if men ask you why,
You may put the blame on the stars and the sun and the
white road and the sky.
_Gerald Gould_
_The Vagabond_
To tread the path of glory needs a braver soul than I,
A man who will not stop to watch the white clouds drifting by,
A man who will not pause to throw a pebble in a stream
Or stretch full length upon its bank, the captive of a dream.
A braver soul than I must tread the rugged way and long,
A man who will not stop to catch the wild canary’s song,
A man who’ll pass a thousand charms and never turn to see
The beauty of the petaled dress upon an apple tree.
To tread the path of glory needs a stronger soul than mine,
A man that isn’t tempted when the air is sharp as wine,
A man that has no vision save the golden goal he seeks,
And doesn’t hear the language which the voice of nature speaks.
But I am prey to woods and fields, to sunny hills and streams,
And I’ve a soul which likes to drift and tease itself with dreams,
And weak am I that should be strong--a sunbeam on a pond
Has but to wink an eye at me, and I’m a vagabond.
_Edgar A. Guest_
_Gipsy Song_
Gipsy, gipsy, gipsy girl!
April’s at the door,
April’s whistling through the wood--
Must I call once more?
Gipsy, gipsy, gipsy girl!
Keen across the night
Hylas flutes among the pools
And the road’s moon-white.
Gipsy, gipsy, gipsy girl!
Must I whistle still,
Waiting at your silent door
On the ferny hill?
Moonlit road and breaking sea,
Wet wind from the south!
Gipsy, all your lover lacks
Is your scarlet mouth!
_Sara Hamilton Birchall_
_The Road To Vagabondia_
He was sitting on a doorstep as I went strolling by;
A lonely little beggar with a wistful, homesick eye--
And he wasn’t what you’d borrow
And he wasn’t what you’d steal--
But I guessed his heart was breaking,
So I whistled him to heel.
They had stoned him through the city streets and naught the city cared,
But I was heading outward and the roads are sweeter shared,
So I took him for a comrade and I whistled him away--
On the road to Vagabondia that lies across the day.
Yellow dog he was; but bless you--he was just the chap for me!
For I’d rather have an inch of dog than miles of pedigree.
So we stole away together on the road that has no end
With a new-coined day to fling away and all the stars to spend!
Oh, to walk the road at morning, when the wind is blowing clean,
And the yellow daisies fling their gold across a world of green--
For the wind it heals the heart-aches and the sun it dries the scars,
On the road to Vagabondia that lies beneath the stars.
’Twas the wonder of the going cast a spell about our feet--
We walked because the world was young, because the way was sweet;
And we slept in wild-rose meadows by the little wayside farms,
’Til the Dawn came up the highroad with the dead moon in her arms.
Oh, the Dawn it went before us through a shining lane of skies,
And the Dream was at our heartstrings and the light was in our eyes,
And we made no boast of glory and we made no boast of birth,
On the road to Vagabondia that lies across the earth.
_Dana Burnet_
_Gipsy Feet_
Oh, gipsy hearts are many enough, but gipsy feet are few!
Many’s the one that loves to dream night-long of stars and dew:
Many’s the one that loves the scent of wood-smoke by the way,
And turns a leaping longing heart to every dawn of day.
Gipsy hearts are many enough, but gipsy feet are few.--
Ah, how ill it is to bide unloosed the long year through!
Up and down the loud gray streets, stared at, staring back,
Through tarnished trails of the staggering sun and soot-fog ochre-black;--
Dressed in heavy and sober togs, eating of heavy fare,
Hailed by only the screaming street, “Mind! step lively there!”
Crook-backed over a dusty desk,--bothering to and fro
There in the dull and airless house,--ah, to cut and go!--
Up the hill-roads into the day! Over the sea-ward fells,
Watch the thistle-down dip, and hear the thin sheep’s huddling bells;
Run like fire along the field, worship the heart of the wood,
Kneel by the spring that splits the rock, and find the white rain good.
--Oh, gipsy hearts are many enough, but gipsy feet are few;
And secret gods must we worship still, if we worship fire and dew.
For we must bend at the dusty desk, and over the counter lean,--
Toil and moil in the sun-starved house, though leaves blow red or green.
God, great God of the wind’s caress, God of the sea’s salute,
Why are we chained and muzzled and meshed more than our brother the brute?
Shall there be never a day that all of the gipsy hearts may greet,
Laughing out at the lure of the sun for the lift of the gipsy feet?
But oh, though that day is far to come, and the feet forget to go free,
Pray God that the hearts may not forget the hurt and the ecstasy!
Pray God that never the fret may fail when the Spring comes over the year,
That never the thin gay autumn dawns may seem less wild and dear.
For shall it not be the height of Heaven, wonderful, swift, and sweet,
If into the paths of perilous death may wander the gipsy feet?
May wander free, with the risk of the road, the road that
the glad Dead know,
Out where the fires of God flame high, and the winds of God lean low!
_Fannie Stearns Davis_
_A Strip of Blue_
I do not own an inch of land,
But all I see is mine,--
The orchard and the mowing-fields,
The lawns and gardens fine.
The winds my tax-collectors are,
They bring me tithes divine,--
Wild scents and subtle essences,
A tribute rare and free;
And, more magnificent than all,
My window keeps for me
A glimpse of blue immensity,--
A little strip of sea.
Richer am I than he who owns
Great fleets and argosies;
I have a share in every ship
Won by the inland breeze
To loiter on yon airy road,
Above the apple-trees.
I freight them with my untold dreams;
Each bears my own picked crew;
And nobler cargoes wait for them
Than ever India knew,--
My ships that sail into the East
Across that outlet blue.
_Lucy Larcom_
_Black Ashes_
Sometime we shall remember them, the little camping places,
A day long, an hour long, a halt beside the way,
Shall see again before us the mountains’ kindly faces
With the white roads pleading, leading through the
hill-mists wreathing gray.
Lichened spur and creeping trail, sun-gold in the west,
Purple moorland, misty lure-land spreading far beneath;
Red-gold flamelight lifting, drifting, round the pine-dark crest
To dim the little village lights asleep upon the heath.
Sometime we shall remember them, from out the days that bind us,
A year long, a life long, that link and hold us fast,
Will come a breath of twilight blent with woodsmoke to remind us
Of the little camping places in the springtimes that are past.
White-spread dunes and opal sea, gray gulls slant the spray,
Spiced sweetfern by sandy turn where the sun strikes gold,
Scent of woodsmoke, vagrant, fragrant, ah, it haunts the air today
From the little camping places in the Story That Is Told.
_Martha Haskell Clark_
_The Wander Lure_
The robin’s on the wing again; I hear the call o’ spring again,
And fain am I to follow, lass; it calls me not in vain!
Yea, I would join the chorus. Lo! the highway is before us,--
_But what if she, my first beloved, should call to me again?_
The wander lure is part o’ me, and love is in the heart o’ me,
And I would tread the road with you that leads beyond the door.
I hear the cry o’ laughter, and my feet would follow after,--
_But what if she, my first beloved, should call to me once more?_
Yea, I will follow you, my lass, around the world and through, my lass,
To seek the peace o’ summer moons that waits beside the sea.
We’ll leave the past behind us; come, the joy o’ life will find us,--
_But what if she, my first beloved, should call again to me?_
_Kendall Banning_
_Comrades of the Trail_
Until the day the world shall die
We shall be comrades, you and I.
For we have seen the morning break
In golden beauty on that lake
That rests in intimate grace before
Our cedar cabin’s unlatched door;
And we have heard the rain at night
And blessed our driftwood hearthfire light;
Wakened by thunder, we have crept
Closer and turned again and slept
While the trees crashed, weakening,
And blocked our trail up to the spring.
Dangers of cities never draw
Two close as does the forest’s awe;
Beauties of cities never bind
Memory and heart and soul and mind
As does the dawn in forest places,
Or tree-rent moonlight on our faces.
Husband and wife! If that were all!
Not vows alone have made us thrall,
But none can evermore walk free
Bound to each other as are we,
By sky and water, fern and tree.
_Mary Carolyn Davies_
_The Vagrant_
I will leave the dust of the city street and the noise of the busy town
For the windy moor and the high hill and the peat-stream flowing brown;
I will keep my watch by the camp-fires where the white
cliffs lean to the sea,
And dawn shall wake me with golden hands and the rain shall walk with me.
I will seek the place where gypsies roam and strange, wild
songs are sung;
I will find once more the magic paths I knew when earth was young,
And the stars will give me comradeship and the wind will be my friend,
And I will send you the fairy gold that lies at the rainbow’s end.
Stretch not your hands nor bid me stay, I hear the white road’s call,
The sun hath kissed the buds from sleep, and I am one with them all;
But I will send you a golden cloak and a pair of silver shoon,
And a dream that the fairies spin from stars on the other
side of the moon.
_Pauline Slender_
_The Gipsy Wedding_
Once more the gipsy aster
Her flaunting kerchief waves,
Once more along the wood-ways
His nuts the squirrel saves;
Once more the vagrant passion
Stirs heart of man and maid,
Once more it is October,
Once more the spell is laid.
And to Saint Bartel’s altar
Two come where was but one,
With goldenrod and beechleaf
Beneath the amber sun;
Two come, Saint Bartelmeo,
With sunbrowned hand in hand,
To pray your blessing, Father,
Upon the golden band.
There in the tall cathedral
Of tamarack and pine,
The old saint gives the blessing,
The sunbrowned fingers twine.
And down the dusky wood-ways
The gipsy lad and maid
Go hand in hand together
Forever unafraid.
_Sara Hamilton Birchall_
_The Vagabond At Home_
Oh, it’s spring once more in France, and it’s spring in gay Algiers,
And it’s spring along the happy Appian Way;
There are cherries in Japan, and the thrushes’ joy and tears
Pipe for England, “There is nowhere such a day!”
How the call rings clear, commanding: “Hurry over, sail afar
To the date-tree and the banyan’s dim domain;
To the Yangtze and the Yalu, where the bell-topped temples are;
And remember there are castles left in Spain!”
But I hear a whisper steady, blowing down my own home-stream
Full of all the glad romance I used to know:
“Leave the lands beyond to others;
Our wee woodfolk are your brothers;
And the earth is bursting treasure!” So I go.
When the wander urge is on me, there are never bonds that hold;
When the summons comes, it never comes in vain;
But the foreign trails are either far too new or far too old--
Give me April in my native woods again!
_Ruth Wright Kauffman_
_The Gipsy Trail_
The white moth to the closing vine,
The bee to the open clover,
And the gipsy blood to the gipsy blood
Ever the wide world over.
Ever the wide world over, lass,
Ever the trail held true,
Over the world and under the world,
And back at the last to you.
Out of the dark of the gorgio camp,
Out of the grime and the gray
(Morning waits at the end of the world),
Gipsy, come away!
The wild boar to the sun-dried swamp,
The red crane to her reed,
And the Romany lass to the Romany lad
By the tie of a roving breed.
Morning waits at the end of the world
Where winds unhaltered play,
Nipping the flanks of their plunging ranks,
Till the white sea-horses neigh.
The pied snake to the rifted rock,
The buck to the stony plain,
And the Romany lass to the Romany lad,
And both to the road again.
Both to the road again, again!
Out on a clean sea-track--
Follow the cross of the gipsy trail
Over the world and back!
Follow the Romany patteran
North where the blue bergs sail,
And the bows are gray with the frozen spray,
And the masts are shod with mail.
Follow the Romany patteran
Sheer to the Austral Light,
Where the besom of God is the wild south wind,
Sweeping the sea-floors white.
Follow the Romany patteran
West to the sinking sun,
Till the junk-sails lift through the houseless drift,
And the east and the west are one.
Follow the Romany patteran
East where the silence broods
By a purple wave on an opal beach
In the hush of the Mahim Woods.
The wild hawk to the wind-swept sky,
The deer to the wholesome wold,
And the heart of a man to the heart of a maid,
As it was in the days of old.
The heart of a man to the heart of a maid--
Light of my tents, be fleet!
Morning waits at the end of the world,
And the world is all at our feet!
_Rudyard Kipling_
_St. Bartholomew’s On The Hill_
Bartholomew, my brother,
I like your roomy church;
I like your way of leaving
No sinners in the lurch.
I wish the world were wealthy
In ministers like you,
When at the lovely August
You give the blessed dew.
I love your rambling Abbey,
So long ago begun,
Whose choirs are in the tree-tops,
Whose censor is the sun.
Its windows are the morning;
Its rafters are the stars;
The fog-banks float like incense
Up from its purple floors.
And where the ruddy apples
Make lamps in the green gloom,
The flowers in congregation
Are never pressed for room;
But in your hillside chapel,
Gay with its gorgeous paints,
They bow before the Presence,--
Sweet, merry little saints.
_Bliss Carman_
_Fishing_
“Men will grow weary,” said the Lord,
“Of working for their bed and board.
They’ll weary of the money chase
And want to find a resting place
Where hum of wheel is never heard
And no one speaks an angry word.
And selfishness and greed and pride
And petty motives don’t abide.
They’ll need a place where they can go
To wash their souls as white as snow.
They will be better men and true
If they can play a day or two.”
The Lord then made the brooks to flow
And fashioned rivers here below,
And many lakes; for water seems
Best suited for a mortal’s dreams.
He placed about them willow trees
To catch the murmur of the breeze.
And the birds that sing the best
Among the foliage to nest.
He filled each pond and stream and lake
With fish for man to come and take.
Then stretched a velvet carpet deep
On which a weary soul could sleep.
It seemed to me the Good Lord knew
That man would want something to do
When, worn and wearied with the stress
Of battling hard for world success,
When sick at heart of all the strife
And pettiness of daily life.
He knew he’d need, from time to time
To cleanse himself of city grime,
And he would want some place to be
Where hate and greed he’d never see,
And so on lakes and streams and brooks
The Good Lord fashioned fishing nooks.
_Edgar A. Guest_
_A Vagabond Song_
There is something in the autumn that is native to my blood--
Touch of manner, hint of mood;
And my heart is like a rhyme,
With the yellow and the purple and the crimson keeping time.
The scarlet of the maples can shake me like a cry
Of bugles going by.
And my lonely spirit thrills
To see the frosty asters like a smoke upon the hills.
There is something in October sets the gypsy blood astir;
We must rise and follow her,
When from every hill of flame
She calls and calls each vagabond by name.
_Bliss Carman_
_Have You?_
Have you ever built a camp-fire at the closing of the day?
Have you sat and watched the embers glowing red?
With your scanty supper finished and the things all cleared away,
Have you sat and smoked and thought about your bed?
Of the bed you left behind you in the dwelling-place of man,
In the much o’er-furnished room you knew of yore;
Ere you sought the silent places where a fellow learns he can
Do a lot of things he never did before?
Have you ever spread a blanket down beneath the star-strewn skies?
Rolled yourself within its cozy folds to sleep,
At the base of mighty mountains, with their peaks that rise and rise?
Have you known the age-old silence that they keep?
Have you seen the red sun climbing up the eastern slope? Then know
You will ne’er forget those rugged, happy days.
What! You’ve never known the glory of the new-born day? Then go--
It’s a road that’s hard to travel--but it pays.
_Harry M. Dean_
_Gypsy-Heart_
The April world is misted with emerald and gold;
The meadow-larks are calling sweet and keen;
Gypsy-heart is up and off for woodland and for wold,
Roaming, roaming, roaming through the green.
Gypsy-heart, away!
Oh, the wind--the wind and the sun!
Take the blithe adventure of the fugitive to-day;
Youth will soon be done.
From buds that May is kissing there trembles forth a soul;
The rosy boughs are whispering the white;
Gypsy-heart is heedless now of thrush and oriole,
Dreaming, dreaming, dreaming of delight.
Gypsy-heart, beware!
Oh, the song--the song in the blood!
Magic walks the forest; there’s bewitchment on the air.
Spring is at the flood.
The wings of June are woven of fragrance and of fire;
Heap roses, crimson roses, for her throne.
Gypsy-heart is anguished with tumultuous desire,
Seeking, seeking, seeking for its own.
Gypsy-heart, abide!
Oh, the far--the far is the near!
’Tis a foolish fable that the universe is wide.
All the world is here.
_Katharine Lee Bates_
_A More Ancient Mariner_
The swarthy bee is a buccaneer,
A burly velveted rover,
Who loves the booming wind in his ear
As he sails the seas of clover.
A waif of the goblin pirate crew,
With not a soul to deplore him,
He steers for the open verge of blue
With the filmy world before him.
* * * * *
He harries the ports of the Hollyhocks,
And levies on poor Sweetbrier;
He drinks the whitest wine of Phlox,
And the Rose is his desire.
He hangs in the Willows a night and a day;
He rifles the Buckwheat patches;
Then battens his store of pelf galore
Under the tautest hatches.
He woos the Poppy and weds the Peach,
Inveigles Daffodilly,
And then like a tramp abandons each
For the gorgeous Canada Lily.
* * * * *
He dares to boast, along the coast,
The beauty of Highland Heather,--
How he and she, with night on the sea,
Lay out on the hills together.
He pilfers from every port of the wind,
From April to golden autumn;
But the thieving ways of his mortal days
Are those his mother taught him.
* * * * *
He never could box the compass round;
He doesn’t know port from starboard;
But he knows the gates of the Sundown Straits,
Where the choicest goods are harbored.
He never could see the Rule of Three,
But he knows a rule of thumb
Better than Euclid’s, better than yours,
Or the teachers’ yet to come.
* * * * *
He drones along with his rough sea-song
And the throat of a salty tar,
This devil-may-care, till he makes his lair
By the light of a yellow star.
He looks like a gentleman, lives like a lord,
And works like a Trojan hero;
Then loafs all winter upon his hoard,
With the mercury at zero.
_Bliss Carman_
_Vagabonds_
Upon us vagabonds who take
Our packs and paddles Sunday
The good folk look austerely down,
Though they may smile on Monday.
Some call us pagans, others tramps;
The truth they never knew--
We faithfully attend the Church
Of Saint Bartholomew.
Among the birches on the hill
His holydays are kept
Where thrushes flute the anthems, and
Crumb-charity accept.
The sermon never wearies us;
We hold the Amen pew,
And pay our pew-rent to the Church
Of Saint Bartholomew.
_Sara Hamilton Birchall_
_The Gypsying_
I wish we might go gypsying one day while we’re young--
On a blue October morning
Beneath a cloudless sky,
When all the world’s a vibrant harp
The winds o’ God have strung,
And gay as tossing torches the maples light us by;
The rising sun before us--a golden bubble swung--
I wish we might go gypsying one day while we’re young.
I wish we might go gypsying one day before we’re old--
To step it with the wild west wind
And sing the while we go,
Through far forgotten orchards
Hung with jewels red and gold;
Through cool and fragrant forests where never sun may show,
To stand upon a high hill and watch the mist unfold--
I wish we might go gypsying one day before we’re old.
I wish we might go gypsying, dear lad, the while we care.
The while we’ve heart for hazarding,
The while we’ve will to sing,
The while we’ve wit to hear the call
And youth and mirth to spare,
Before a day may find us too sad for gypsying,
Before a day may find us too dull to dream and dare--
I wish we might go gypsying, dear lad, the while we care.
_Theodosia Garrison_
_The Mendicants_
We are as mendicants who wait
Along the roadside in the sun.
Tatters of yesterday and shreds
Of morrow clothe us every one.
And some are dotards, who believe
And glory in the days of old;
While some are dreamers, harping still
Upon an unknown age of gold.
Hopeless or witless! Not one heeds,
As lavish Time comes down the way
And tosses in the suppliant hat
One great new-minted gold To-day.
* * * * *
O foolish ones, put by your care!
Where wants are many, joys are few;
And at the wilding springs of peace,
God keeps an open house for you.
* * * * *
But there be others, happier few,
The vagabondish sons of God,
Who know the by-ways and the flowers,
And care not how the world may plod.
They idle down the traffic lands,
And loiter through the woods with spring;
To them the glory of the earth
Is but to hear a bluebird sing.
* * * * *
One I remember kept his coin,
And laughing flipped it in the air;
But when two strolling pipe-players
Came by, he tossed it to the pair.
Spendthrift of joy, his childish heart
Danced to their wild outlandish bars;
Then supperless he laid him down
That night, and slept beneath the stars.
_Bliss Carman_
_The Beloved Vagabond_
You who were once so careless, I can recall you now,
Your blue-gray visionary eyes, your great and open brow,
With naught to bind your heart-strings, and all the world in fee,
You went where all the roads lead, beyond the farthest sea.
Lover of space and skyline, what vision seared your eyes?
What gypsy word was winged to you that bade you gird and rise?
What thread of smoke sent onward your restless, eager feet?
What vagrant heart was waiting your wayward heart to greet?
We, who are kin to the city, across the candles praise
Your tales of camps in twilight, your great and gallant ways,
Your knowledge of the mysteries deep-hidden by the wood,
The pagan trust you placed in man, the world you found so good.
Then leave a _patrin_ for mine eyes that I may follow too,
Some day when all the world grows dim, and I shall beckon you;
Across the distant moorland, from beacon furze piled high,
May I, the newest rover, see your fire against the sky!
_W. G. Tinckom-Fernandez_
_The Secret Voices_
Have you heard the secret voices go whispering in your blood,
Of burning wood and falling leaf and swelling Springtime flood?
Have you felt the tang of lusty wind, the stinging lash of rain,
As tides of Spring march down the days with summer in their train?
Have you known the zest and sparkle, felt the magic in the air,
And set your feet upon the road that leads to Anywhere?
And seen the skirts of storm-clouds trailing over budding trees,
And drunk the wine of virile life down to the very lees?
Have you heard and have you known the voices of the wind,
That bid a man rise up and go and follow till he find
The pot of gold at the rainbow’s base,
Or a secret dream in a hidden place....
Have you heard the secret voices whispering that Spring has come,
Calling you to rise and follow till you walk into the sun?
_Ethel Mannin_
_The Changing Year_
_Who shall inquire of the season,
Or question the wind where it blows?
We blossom and ask no reason,
The Lord of the Garden knows._