XI

THE FREE SPIRIT

STONE walls do not a prison make,

Nor iron bars a cage;

Minds innocent and quiet take

That for an hermitage.

RICHARD LOVELACE

What boots it that I am crushed by no foreign yoke, if through ignorance and vice, through selfishness and fear, I want the command of my own mind? The worst tyrants are those which establish themselves in our own breasts.

WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING

Do not leave the sky out of your landscape.

RALPH WALDO EMERSON

IT IS NOT RAINING RAIN TO ME

It is not raining rain to me,
It's raining daffodils;
In every dimpled drop I see
Wild flowers on the hills.

The clouds of gray engulf the day,
And overwhelm the town;

It is not raining rain to me,
It's raining roses down.

It is not raining rain to me,
But fields of clover bloom,
Where any buccaneering bee
May find a bed and room.

A health unto the happy!
A fig for him who frets!
It is not raining rain to me,
It's raining violets.

MIRACLE

ROBERT LOVEMAN

WHO is in love with loveliness,

Need not shake with cold;
For he may tear a star in two,
And frock himself in gold.

Who holds her first within his heart,
In certain favor goes;

If his roof tumbles, he may find

Harbor in a rose.

LIZETTE WOODWORTH REESE

ENVY

I HAVE a yellow jumping-jack,
And Billy has another;

My jumping-jack he kicks one leg
Before he kicks the other.

But Billy's yellow jumping-jack
I think is better fun,

Because he kicks the other leg

Before he kicks the one.

ARTHUR GUITERMAN

(From The Light Guitar, Harper and Brothers)

THE ENCHANTED SHIRT

Fytte the First: wherein it shall be shown how the Truth is too mighty a Drug for such as be of feeble temper.

THE King was sick. His cheek was red

And his eye was clear and bright;

He ate and drank with a kingly zest,

And peacefully snored at night;

But he said he was sick, and a king should know,

And doctors came by the score.

They did not cure him. He cut off their heads
And sent to the schools for more.

At last two famous doctors came,

And one was as poor as a rat;
He had passed his life in studious toil,
And never found time to grow fat.

The other had never looked in a book;
His patients gave him no trouble,
If they recovered they paid him well,

If they died their heirs paid double.

Together they looked at the royal tongue,
As the King on his couch reclined;
In succession they thumped his august chest,
But no trace of disease could find.

The old sage said, "You 're as sound as a nut."
"Hang him up," roared the King in a gale,
In a ten-knot of royal rage;

The other leech grew a shade pale;

But he pensively rubbed his sagacious nose,
And thus his prescription ran:

"The King will be well, if he sleeps one night

In the shirt of a happy man.'

Fytte the Second: tells of the search for the Shirt and how it was nigh found but was not, for reasons which are said or sung.

Wide o'er the realm the couriers rode,

And fast their horses ran,

And many they saw, and to many they spoke,

But they found no Happy Man.

They found poor men who would fain be rich,
And rich who thought they were poor;
And men who twisted their waists in stays,
And women that shorthose wore.