Joy and joy and joy forever, Make me over in the morning Shreds of banners long since furled! Let me taste the old immortal Give me the old drink for rapture, All my fellows drank in plenty At the Three Score Inns and Twenty Only make me over, April, When the sap begins to stir! Make me man or make me woman, Make me oaf or ape or human, Cup of flower or cone of fir; When the sap begins to stir! Bliss Carman [1861 THE MENDICANTS WE are as mendicants who wait The Mendicants And some are dotards, who believe Hopeless or witless! Not one heeds, One great new-minted gold To-day. Ungrateful heart and grudging thanks, 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 that some Fortunatus' gift Is lying there within his hand, More costly than a pot of pearls, His dullness does not understand. And so his creature heart is filled; His shrunken self goes starved away. Let him wear brand-new garments still, Who has a threadbare soul, I say. But there be others, happier few, Who know the by-ways and the flowers, 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. 1693 They too receive each one his Day; But their wise heart knows many things Beyond the sating of desire, Above the dignity of kings. One I remember kept his coin, Spendthrift of joy, his childish heart Then supperless he laid him down. That night, and slept beneath the stars. THE JOYS OF THE ROAD Now the joys of the road are chiefly these: A vagrant's morning wide and blue, A shadowy highway cool and brown From rippled water to dappled swamp, The outward eye, the quiet will, The tempter apple over the fence; The cobweb bloom on the yellow quince; The palish asters along the wood,- An open hand, an easy shoe, And a hope to make the day go through, Another to sleep with, and a third To wake me up at the voice of a bird; The Joys of the Road The resonant far-listening morn, The crickets mourning their comrades lost. (Or is it their slogan, plaintive and shrill, A hunger fit for the kings of the sea, A thirst like that of the Thirsty Sword, An idle noon, a bubbling spring, A scrap of gossip at the ferry; A comrade neither glum nor merry, Asking nothing, revealing naught, But minting his words from a fund of thought, A keeper of silence eloquent, Needy, yet royally well content, Of the mettled breed, yet abhorring strife, A taster of wine, with an eye for a maid, Never heart-whole, never heart-sick, No fidget and no reformer, just A calm observer of ought and must, A lover of books, but a reader of man, No cynic and no charlatan, Who never defers and never demands, But, smiling, takes the world in his hands, 1695 1 1 Seeing it good as when God first saw And O the joy that is never won, But follows and follows the journeying sun, By marsh and tide, by meadow and stream, Delusion afar, delight anear, From morrow to morrow, from year to year, A jack-o'-lantern, a fairy fire, A dare, a bliss, and a desire! The racy smell of the forest loam, When the stealthy, sad-heart leaves go home; (O leaves, O leaves, I am one with you, Of the mould and the sun and the wind and the dew!) The broad gold wake of the afternoon; The sound of the hollow sea's release With only another league to wend; These are the joys of the open road— For him who travels without a load. Bliss Carman (1861 THE SONG OF THE FOREST RANGER Oн, to feel the fresh breeze blowing From lone ridges yet untrod! Oh, to see the far peak growing Whiter as it climbs to God! |