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A poem by Bliss Carman |
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The Joys Of The Road |
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Title: The Joys Of The Road Author: Bliss Carman [More Titles by Carman] Now the joys of the road are chiefly these: A vagrant's morning wide and blue, A shadowy highway cool and brown, From rippled water to dappled swamp, The outward eye, the quiet will, The tempter apple over the fence; The palish asters along the wood,-- An open hand, an easy shoe. Another to sleep with, and a third The resonant far-listening morn, The crickets mourning their comrades lost, (Or is it their slogan, plaintive and shrill, A hunger fit for the kings of the sea, A thirst like that of the Thirsty Sword, An idle noon, a bubbling spring, A scrap of gossip at the ferry; Asking nothing, revealing naught, A keeper of silence eloquent, Of the mettled breed, yet abhorring strife, A taster of wine, with an eye for a maid, Never heart-whole, never heart-sick, No fidget and no reformer, just A lover of books, but a reader of man, Who never defers and never demands, Seeing it good as when God first saw And O the joy that is never won, By marsh and tide, by meadow and stream, Delusion afar, delight anear, A jack-o'-lantern, a fairy fire, The racy smell of the forest loam, (O leaves, O leaves, I am one with you, The broad gold wake of the afternoon; The sound of the hollow sea's release With only another league to wend; These are the joys of the open road-- [The end] GO TO TOP OF SCREEN |