The Joys Of The Road.

Now the joys of the road are chiefly these:     A crimson touch on the hard-wood trees;     A vagrant's morning wide and blue,     In early fall when the wind walks, too;     A shadowy highway cool and brown,     Alluring up and enticing down     From rippled water to dappled swamp,     From purple glory to scarlet pomp;     The outward eye, the quiet will,     And the striding heart from hill to hill;     The tempter apple over the fence;     The cobweb bloom on the yellow quince;     The palish asters along the wood,--     A lyric touch of the solitude;     An open hand, an easy shoe.     And a hope to make the day go through,--     Another to sleep with, and a third     To wake me up at the voice of a bird;     The resonant far-listening morn,     And the hoarse whisper of the corn;     The crickets mourning their comrades lost,     In the night's retreat from the gathering frost;     (Or is it their slogan, plaintive and shrill,     As they beat on their corselets, valiant still?)     A hunger fit for the kings of the sea,     And a loaf of bread for Dickon and me;     A thirst like that of the Thirsty Sword,     And a jug of cider on the board;     An idle noon, a bubbling spring,     The sea in the pine-tops murmuring;     A scrap of gossip at the ferry;     A comrade neither glum nor merry,     Asking nothing, revealing naught,     But minting his words from a fund of thought,     A keeper of silence eloquent,     Needy, yet royally well content,     Of the mettled breed, yet abhorring strife,     And full of the mellow juice of life;     A taster of wine, with an eye for a maid,     Never too bold, and never afraid,     Never heart-whole, never heart-sick,     (These are the things I worship in Dick)     No fidget and no reformer, just     A calm observer of ought and must,     A lover of books, but a reader of man,     No cynic and no charlatan,     Who never defers and never demands,     But, smiling, takes the world in his hands,--     Seeing it good as when God first saw     And gave it the weight of his will for law.     And O the joy that is never won,     But follows and follows the journeying sun,     By marsh and tide, by meadow and stream,     A will-o'-the-wind, a light-o'-dream,     Delusion afar, delight anear,     From morrow to morrow, from year to year,     A jack-o'-lantern, a fairy fire,     A dare, a bliss, and a desire!     The racy smell of the forest loam,     When the stealthy, sad-heart leaves go home;     (O leaves, O leaves, I am one with you,     Of the mould and the sun and the wind and the dew!)     The broad gold wake of the afternoon;     The silent fleck of the cold new moon;     The sound of the hollow sea's release     From stormy tumult to starry peace;     With only another league to wend;     And two brown arms at the journey's end!     These are the joys of the open road--     For him who travels without a load.