The ash-tree and the lady-fern,
In russet frondage,
Proclaim 'tis time for our return
To vagabondage.
All summer idle have we kept;
But on a morning,
Where the blue hazy mountains slept,
A scarlet warning
Disturbs our day-dream with a start;
A leaf turns over;
And every earthling is at heart
Once more a rover.
All winter we shall toil and plod,
Eating and drinking;
But now's the little time when God
Sets folk to thinking.
"Consider," says the quiet sun,
"How far I wander;
Yet when had I not time on one
More flower to squander?"
"Consider," says the restless tide,
"My endless labor;
Yet when was I content beside
My nearest neighbor?"
So wander-lust to wander-lure,
As seed to season,
Must rise and wend, possessed and sure
In sweet unreason.
For doorstone and repose are good,
And kind is duty;
But joy is in the solitude
With shy-heart beauty.
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.
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