Last Songs from Vagabondia

by Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey

 

HOLIDAY

 
WHAT is this joy to-day,
Hope, reparation, reprieve?

Out of the sweltering city,
Out of the blaring streets
And narrow houses of men,
5
The seaboard express for the North
Forges, and settles for flight
Into the great blue summer,
The wide, sweet, opulent noon.

Farewell despondency, fear,
10
Ambition, and pitiless greed,
And sordid unlovely regrets!
And thou, frail spirit in me,
My journey-fellow these years,
Behold, thy brothers the elms,
15
And thy sisters the daisies, are here.
Thou, too, shalt grow and be glad,
Companioned of innocence now,
In the long hours of joy.
How will it be that day,
20
When the dark train is ready,
And the inexorable gong
Sounds on the platform of Time.