VERSES FROM "THE CANTICLE OF THE ROAD"
Reading edition
I
On the open road, with the wind at heel
Who is keen of scent and yelping loud,
Stout heart and bounding blood we feel,
Who follow fancy till day has bowed
Her forehead pure to her evening prayer
And drawn the veil on her wind-blown hair.
Free with the hawk and the wind we stride
The open road, and the world is wide
From rim to rim, and the skies hung high,
And room between for a hawk to fly
With tingling wing and lust of the eye.
II
Broad morning, blue morning, oh, jubilant wind!
Lord, Thou hast made our souls to be
Fluent and yearning long, as the sea
Yearns after the moon, and follows her,
With boon of waves and sibilant purr,
Round this world and past and o'er
All waste sea-bottoms and curving shore,
Only once more and again to find
The same sea-bottoms and beaten beach,
The same sweet moon beyond his reach
And drawing him onward as before.
III
Hark, from his covert what a note
The wood thrush whirls from his kingly throat
And the bobolink strikes that silver wire
He stole from the archangelic choir,
From a psaltery played in the glory alone
By an amber angel beneath the throne.
He strikes it twice, and deep, deep, deep,
Where the soul of music lies sleep.—
The rest of his song he learned, Ah me!
From a gay little devil, loose and free,
Making trouble and love in Arcadie.
IV
My brother of the dusty feet
Dragged eastward as my own go west,
Here from the birth of time addressed,
And the manner of your coming set
To this event, that we might meet,
And glance, and pass, and then forget;
We meet no more beneath the sun,
Yet for an instant we were one.
And now once more, as you and I,
In dungeons of ourselves we lie,
And through the grated windows peer;
As though a falling star should shine
A moment in your eyes and mine,
Then darkness there, and silence here.
V
Oh, Fons Bandusiæ, babbling spring,
From what deep wells come whispering!
What message bringest thou, what spells
From buried mountain oracles,
Thou limpid, lucid mystery?
Nay, this one thing I read in thee,
That saint or sinner, wise or fool,
Who dips hot lips within thy pool,
Or last or first, or best or worst,
Thou askest only that he thirst,
And givest water pure and cool.
VI
A draught of water from the spring,
An apple from the wayside tree,
A bit of bread for strengthening,
A pipe for grace and policy;
And so, by taking time, to find
A world that's mainly to one's mind;
Some health, some wit in friends a few,
Some high behaviours in their kind,
Some dispositions to be true.