And Truth is one whose ways are meek
Beyond foretelling;
And far his journey who would seek
Her lowly dwelling.

She leads him by a thousand heights,
Lonelily faring,
With sunrise and with eagle flights
To mate his daring.

For her he fronts a vaster fog
Than Leif of yore did,
Voyaging for continents no log
Has yet recorded.

He travels by a polar star,
Now bright, now hidden,
For a free land, though rest be far
And roads forbidden,

Till on a day with sweet coarse bread
And wine she stays him,
Then in a cool and narrow bed
To slumber lays him.

So we are hers.  And, fellows mine
Of fin and feather,
By shady wood and shadowy brine,
When comes the weather

For migrants to be moving on,
By lost indenture
You flock and gather and are gone: 
The old adventure!

I too have my unwritten date,
My gypsy presage;
And on the brink of fall I wait
The darkling message.

The sign, from prying eyes concealed,
Is yet how flagrant! 
Here’s ragged-robin in the field,
A simple vagrant.

THE MOTHER OF POETS.  To H. F. H.

The typewriter ticketh no more in the twilight;
The mother of poets is sitting alone;
Only the katydid teases the noonday;
Where are the good-for-naught wanderbirds flown?

Tom’s in the North with his purple impressions;
Dickon’s in London a-building his fame;
Fred’s in the mountains a-minding his cattle;
Kavanagh’s teaching and preaching and game.

Over in Kingscroft a toiler is writing,
The boyish Old Man whom no fate ever floored;
Karl’s in New York with his briefs and his logic,
That subtile mind like a velvet-sheathed sword.

Blomidon welcomes his brother in silence;
Grand Pre is luring him back to her breast;
Faint and far off are the cries of the city,
There in the country of infinite rest.

All of them turn in their wide vagabondage,
Halt and remember a place they have known,
Where the typewriter ticketh no more in the twilight,
And the mother of poets is sitting alone.

There they will surely some April forgather,
Drink once together before they depart,
One by one over the threshold of silence,
On the long trail of the wandering heart.

Fear not, little mother, there may be a region
Where poets have only to smile and keep still. 
The tick of the typewriter there will be useless,
But there will be need of a motherkin still.

A GOOD-BY.

For love of the roving foot
And joy of the roving eye,
God send you store of morrows fair
And a good rest by and by!

IN A COPY OF BROWNING.

Browning, old fellow,
Your leaves grow yellow,
Beginning to mellow
As seasons pass. 
Your cover is wrinkled,
And stained and sprinkled,
And warped and crinkled
From sleep on the grass.