For me to linger here, alas,
While happy winds go laughing by,
Wasting the golden hours indoors,
Washing windows and scrubbing floors.
Too wonderful the April night,
Too faintly sweet the first May flowers,
The stars too gloriously bright,
For me to spend the evening hours,
When fields are fresh and streams are leaping,
Wearied, exhausted, dully sleeping.
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O sweet are tropic lands for waking dreams!
There by the banks of blue-and-silver streamsGrass-sheltered crickets chirp incessant song,Gay-colored lizards loll all through the day,Their tongues outstretched for careless little flies,And swarthy children in the fields at play,Look upward laughing at the smiling skies.A breath of idleness is in the airThat casts a subtle spell upon all things,And love and mating-time are everywhere,And…
I plucked my soul out of its secret place,
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So much have I forgotten in ten years,
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Now the dead past seems vividly alive,
Down through the vista of the vanished years,Your faun-like form, your fond elusive face.And suddenly some secret spring’s released,And unawares a riddle is revealed,And I can read like large, black-lettered print,What seemed before a thing forever sealed.I know the magic word, the graceful thought,The song that fills me in my lucid hours,The spirit’s wine that…
I would be wandering in distant fields
And the old earth is kind, and ever yieldsHer goodly gifts to all her children free;Where life is fairer, lighter, less demanding,And boys and girls have time and space for playBefore they come to years of understanding–Somewhere I would be singing, far away.For life is greater than the thousand warsMen wage for it in their…