The firelight plays since dusk began
To gather in the room,
Beyond the pane the daylight’s span
Grows to the evening gloom;
But my heart is out with the gipsy man
In his lair among the broom.
Beside the farm both barn and stack
Dark in the steading rise,
Up in the loaning green, the track
Along the firwood lies,
Where the gipsy sits with his brows of black,
And the black light in his eyes.
He marks the swift owl skim the trees
When twilight turns to grey,
He hears the whisper up the leas
Before the coming day,
And the secret hours of the world he sees
And the soul of night at play.
His ceiling is the drooping bough,
The fir-trees’ ragged limb,
When from the hills the western sough
Sings o’er the lowlands dim;
And the polestar, hanging above the Plough,
Is the lantern-flame for him.
O weary roof and crowding wall
That bar the scented air!
O chain and key whose ceaseless thrall
Lies on a world of care,
There are no bolts shot in the firwood tall
But the joy of life is there!
O to be out when spring has drest
The green moss for a bed,
To roam by plain and wooded crest
Till the rose-hips turn to red;
And to lay me down for the last long rest,
With the great sky overhead!
❦
‘COME ON, COME UP, YE ROVERS’
Come on, come up, ye rovers
Whose ships at anchor ride,
The west wind stirs the clovers,
And O! the world is wide:
So, up with your chains as the sun goes down
And out upon the tide!
There drives on the Atlantic
The torn scud of the rain,
And lines of foam leap frantic
Against the coast of Spain,
Where the air is full of the souls of men
Who sailed the Spanish Main.
Where Rocca’s light is burning
On plunging miles of sea,
Eastward and eastward turning,
By Crete and Tripoli,
There is a spirit abroad in the wind
That cries aloud to me.
The coast drops low behind you,
The gull swoops round the spars;
Shall small men’s limits bind you
Whose milestones are the stars?
Whose signposts stand where Orion swings
Above earth’s locks and bars?
Come up, ye sons of morning,
This world was built for you!
Far off, Heaven’s light’s adorning
The lands where dreams come true;
And the Angel that sits at the Gates of the East
Shall open and let you through.
❦