Few enough have been my needs;
Fewer now they are to be;
Where the faintest follow leads,
There is heart's content for me.

Leave the bread upon the board;
Leave the book beside the chair;
With the murmur of the ford,
Light of spirit I shall fare.

Leave the latch-string in the door,
And the pile of logs to burn;
Others may be here before

I have leisure to return.

Bliss Carman

TH

A VAGABOND SONG

◄HERE 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 each hill of flame

She calls and calls each vagabond by name.

Bliss Carman

NOW

THE JOYS OF THE ROAD

OW the joys of the road are chiefly these:
A crimson touch on the hard-wood trees;

A vagrant's morning wide and blue,
In early fall, when the wind walks, too;

A shadowy highway cool and brown,
Alluring up and enticing down

From rippled water to dappled swamp,
From purple glory to scarlet pomp;

The outward eye, the quiet will,
And the striding heart from hill to hill;

The tempter apple over the fence;
The cobweb bloom on the yellow quince;

The palish asters along the wood,-
A lyric touch in the solitude;

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 resonant far-listening morn,

And the hoarse whisper of the corn;

The crickets mourning their comrades lost,
In the night's retreat from the gathering frost;

(Or is it their slogan, plaintive and shrill, As they beat on their corselets, valiant still?)

A hunger fit for the kings of the sea,
And a loaf of bread for Dickon and me;

A thirst like that of the Thirsty Sword,
And a jug of cider on the board;

An idle noon, a bubbling spring,
The sea in the pine-tops murmuring;

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,
And full of the mellow juice of life,

A taster of wine, with an eye for a maid,
Never too bold, and never afraid,

Never heart-whole, never heart-sick,
(These are the things I worship in Dick)

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,-

Seeing it good as when God first saw
And gave it the weight of his will for law.

And O the joy that is never won,

But follows and follows the journeying sun,

By marsh and tide, by meadow and stream,
A will-o'-the-wind, a light-o'-dream,

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 silent fleck of the cold new moon;

The sound of the hollow sea's release
From stormy tumult to starry peace;

With only another league to wend;
And two brown arms at the journey's end!

These are the joys of the open road
For him who travels without a load.

Bliss Carman

AMONG THE ROCKS

OH, good gigantic smile o' the brown old

earth,

This autumn morning! How he sets his bones To bask 'the sun, and thrusts out knees and feet

For the ripple to run over in its mirth;

Listening the while, where on the heap of

stones

The white breast of the sea-lark twitters sweet.

That is the doctrine, simple, ancient, true;

Such is life's trial, as old earth smiles and knows.

If you loved only what were worth your love, Love were clear gain, and wholly well for you: Make the low nature better by your throes! Give earth yourself, go up for gain above! Robert Browning

TO AUTUMN

EASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness!

SEASON of mists, and of the maturing sun;

Conspiring with him how to load and bless With fruit the vines that round the thatch

eaves run.

To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees, And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core; To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells

With a sweet kernel; to set budding more, And still more, later flowers for the bees, Until they think warm days will never cease, For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.