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.

THE GRAVEDIGGER

Oh, the shambling sea is a sexton old,

And well his work is done.

With an equal grave for lord and knave,

He buries them every one.

Then hoy and rip, with a rolling hip,
He makes for the nearest shore;

And God, who sent him a thousand ship,
Will send him a thousand more;

But some he'll save for a bleaching grave,
And shoulder them in to shore,—
Shoulder them in, shoulder them in,
Shoulder them in to shore.

Oh, the ships of Greece and the ships of Tyre
Went out, and where are they?

In the port they made, they are delayed
With the ships of yesterday.

He followed the ships of England far,

As the ships of long ago;

And the ships of France they led him a dance, But he laid them all arow.

Oh, a loafing, idle lubber to him

Is the sexton of the town;

For sure and swift, with a guiding lift,

He shovels the dead men down.

But though he delves so fierce and grim,
His honest graves are wide,

As well they know who sleep below
The dredge of the deepest tide.

Oh, he works with a rollicking stave at lip, And loud is the chorus skirled;

With the burly rote of his rumbling throat He batters it down the world.

He learned it once in his father's house,
Where the ballads of eld were sung;
And merry enough is the burden rough,
But no man knows the tongue.

Oh, fair, they say, was his bride to see,
And wilful she must have been,

That she could bide at his gruesome side
When the first red dawn came in.

And sweet, they say, is her kiss to those
She greets to his border home;

And softer than sleep her hand's first sweep
That beckons, and they come.

Oh, crooked is he, but strong enough

To handle the tallest mast;

From the royal barque to the slaver dark,

He buries them all at last.

Then hoy and rip, with a rolling hip,
He makes for the nearest shore;

And God, who sent him a thousand ship,
Will send him a thousand more;

But some he'll save for a bleaching grave,
And shoulder them in to shore,-

Shoulder them in, shoulder them in,
Shoulder them in to shore.

HEM AND HAW

Hem and Haw were the sons of sin,
Created to shally and shirk;

Hem lay 'round and Haw looked on
While God did all the work.

Hem was a fogy, and Haw was a prig,
For both had the dull, dull mind;
And whenever they found a thing to do,
They yammered and went it blind.

Hem was the father of bigots and bores;
As the sands of the sea were they.
And Haw was the father of all the tribe
Who criticize to-day.

But God was an artist from the first,
And knew what he was about;

And advised him to rub it out.

While over his shoulder sneered these two,

They prophesied ruin ere man was made;
"Such folly must surely fail!"

And when he was done, "Do you think, my Lord,
He's better without a tail?

And still in the honest working world,
With posture and hint and smirk,
These sons of the devil are standing by
While man does all the work.

They balk endeavor and baffle reform,
In the sacred name of law;

And over the quavering voice of Hem
Is the droning voice of Haw.

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 hearts 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!"

Richard Burton

Richard (Eugene) Burton was born at Hartford, Connecticut, March 14, 1861. He has taught English at various colleges and universities since 1888, and has been head of the English department of the University of Minnesota since 1906. His first book, Dumb in June (1895), is, in many ways, his best. It contains a buoyant lyricism, a more conscious use of the strain developed in Carman and Hovey's Songs from Vagabondia—a mood which he has never surpassed. Much of his other verse is far less distinctive, being what might be called " anonymous poetry" a poetry that has, in spite of certain excellent qualities, little trace of the individual and practically no stamp of personality or place. The succeeding Lyrics of Brotherhood (1899) has a wider vision if a more limited music; several of the poems