IN CITY STREETS YONDER in the heather there's a bed for sleeping, Sorely throb my feet, a-tramping London highways, ways, Homeless in the City, poor among the poor! London streets are gold-ah, give me leaves a-glinting Oh, my heart is fain to hear the soft wind blowing, THE VAGABOND (To an Air of Schubert) GIVE to me the life I love, And the byway nigh me. Let the blow fall soon or late, IN THE HIGHLANDS In the highlands, in the country places, Quiet eyes; Where essential silence cheers and blesses, Her more lovely music Broods and dies. O to mount again where erst I haunted; Bright with sward; i. And when even dies, the million-tinted, And the night has come, and planets glinted, O to dream, O to awake and wander There, and with delight to take and render, Quiet breath! Lo! for there, among the flowers and grasses, Life and Death. Robert Louis Stevenson [1850-1894] THE SONG MY PADDLE SINGS WEST wind, blow from your prairie nest, Blow from the mountains, blow from the west. O wind of the west, we wait for you! I have wooed you so, But never a favor you bestow. You rock your cradle the hills between, I stow the sail and unship the mast: My paddle will lull you into rest: O drowsy wind of the drowsy west, By your mountains steep, Or down where the prairie grasses sweep, Be strong, O paddle! be brave, canoe! Reel, reel, The Gipsy Trail On your trembling keel, But never a fear my craft will feel. We've raced the rapids; we're far ahead: The river slips through its silent bed. Sway, sway, As the bubbles spray And fall in tinkling tunes away. And up on the hills against the sky, A fir tree rocking its lullaby Swings, swings, Its emerald wings, Swelling the song that my paddie sings. E. Pauline Johnson [1862 THE GIPSY TRAIL THE white moth to the closing vine, And the gipsy blood to the gipsy blood Ever the wide world over, lass, Over the world and under the world, Out of the dark of the gorgio camp, The wild boar to the sun-dried swamp, The red crane to her reed, And the Romany lass to the Romany lad 1629 Morning waits at the end of the world Where winds unhaltered play, Nipping the flanks of their plunging ranks, The pied snake to the rifted rock, And the Romany lass to the Romany lad, Both to the road again, again! Follow the Romany patteran North where the blue bergs sail, Follow the Romany patteran Sheer to the Austral Light, Where the besom of God is the wild west wind, Sweeping the sea-floors white. Follow the Romany patteran West to the sinking sun, Till the junk-sails lift through the houseless drift, And the east and the west are one. Follow the Romany patteran East where the silence broods By a purple wave on an opal beach The wild hawk to the wind-swept sky, And the heart of a man to the heart of a maid, |