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,     Throbbing and tingling,--     With a human cheer     In the earth-song mingling,--     Mirth and carousal,     Wooing, espousal,     Clinking of glasses     And laughter of lasses--     And the wind in the garden stoops down as it passes     To play with the hair     Of the loveliest there,     And the wander-lust catches the will in its snare;     Hill-wind and spray-lure,     Call of the heath;     Dare in the teeth     Of the balk and the failure;     The clasp and the linger     Of loosening finger,     Loth to dissever;     Thrill of the comrade heart to its fellow     Through droughts that sicken and blasts that bellow     From purple furrow to harvest yellow,     Now and forever.     How our feet itch to keep time to their measure!     How our hearts lift to the lilt of their song!     Let the world go, for a day's royal pleasure!     Not every summer such waifs come along.     Now they are off to the inn;     Hear the clean ring of their laughter!     Cool as a hill-brook after     The beat of the noon sets in!     Gentlemen even in jollity--     Certainly people of quality!--     Waifs and estrays no less,     Roofless and penniless,     They are the wayside strummers     Whose lips are man's renown,     Those wayward brats of Summer's     Who stroll from town to town;     Spendthrift of life, they ravish     The days of an endless store,     And ever the more they lavish     The heap of the hoard is more.     For joy and love and vision     Are alive and breed and stay     When dust shall hold in derision     The misers of a day.