More Songs From Vagabondia eBook

Richard Hovey
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 45 pages of information about More Songs From Vagabondia.

More Songs From Vagabondia eBook

Richard Hovey
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 45 pages of information about More Songs From Vagabondia.

JONGLEURS.

What is the stir in the street? 
Hurry of feet! 
And after,
A sound as of pipes and of tabers!

Men of the conflicts and labors,
Struggling and shifting and shoving,
Pushing and pounding your neighbors,
Fighting for leeway for laughter,
Toiling for leisure for loving! 
Hark, through the window and up to the rafter,
Madder and merrier,
Deeper and verier,
Sweeter, contrarier,
Dafter and dafter,
A song arises,—­
A thrill, an intrusion,
A reel, an illusion,
A rapture, a crisis
Of bells in the air!

Ay, up from your work and look out of the window! 
“Who are the newcomers, Arab or Hindoo? 
Persians, or Japs, or the children of Isis?”
—­Guesses, surmises—­
Forth with you, fare
Down in the street to draw nearer and stare! 
Come from your palaces, come from your hovels! 
Lay down your ledgers, your picks and your shovels,
Your trowels and bricks,
Hammers and nails,
Scythes and flails,
Bargains and sales,
And the trader’s tricks,
Deals, overreachings,
Worries and griefs,
Teachings and preachings,
Boluses, briefs,
Writs and attachments,
Quarterings, hatchments,
Clans and cognomens,
Comments and scholia,
(World’s melancholia)—­
Cast them aside, and good riddance to rubbish! 
Here at the street-corner, hearken, a strain,
Rough and off-hand and a bit rub-a-dub-ish,
Gives us a taste of the life we’d attain.

Who are they, what are they, whence have they come to us? 
Where will they go when their singing is done? 
What is the garb they wear, tattered and sumptuous,
Faded with days and superb in the sun? 
What are they singing of? 
Hush!
...  There’s a ringing of
Delicate chimes;
And the blush
Of a veiled bride morning
Beats in the rhymes. 
Listen! 
Out of the merriment,
Clear as the glisten
Of dew on the brier,
A silver warning! 
Sudden, a dare—­
Lyric experiment—­
Up like a lark in the air,
Higher and higher and higher,
The song shoots out of our blunder
Of thought to the blue sky of wonder,
And broken strains only fall down
Like pearls on the roofs of the town.

Somebody says they have come from the moon,
Seen with their eyes Eldorado,
Sat in the Bo-tree’s shadow,
Wandered at noon
In the valleys of Van,
Tented in Lebanon, tarried in Ophir,
Last year in Tartary piped for the Khan. 
Now it’s the song of a lover;
Now it’s the lilt of a loafer,—­
Under the trees in a midsummer noon,
Dreaming the haze into isles to discover,
Beating the silences into a croon;
Soon
Up from the marshes a fall of the plover! 
Out from the cover
A flurry of quail! 
Down from the height where the slow hawks hover,
The thin far ghost of a hail! 
And near, and near,

Copyrights
Project Gutenberg
More Songs From Vagabondia from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.