THREE
OF A KIND
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|
THREE
of us without a care
In the red September
Tramping down the roads of Maine,
Making merry with the rain,
With the fellow winds a-fare |
5 |
| Where
the winds remember.
Three of us with shocking hats,
Tattered and unbarbered,
Happy with the splash of mud,
With the highways in our blood,
|
10 |
Bearing
down on Deacon Platt’s
Where last year we harbored.
We’ve come down from Kennebec,
Tramping since last Sunday,
Loping down the coast of Maine,
|
15 |
With
the sea for a refrain,
And the maples neck and neck
All the way to Fundy.
Sometimes lodging in an inn,
Cosey as a dormouse—
|
20 |
Sometimes
sleeping on a knoll
With no rooftree but the Pole—
Sometimes halely welcomed in
At an old-time farmhouse.
Loafing under ledge and tree,
|
25 |
Leaping
over boulders,
Sitting on the pasture bars,
Hail-fellow with storm or stars—
Three of us alive and free,
With unburdened shoulders! |
30 |
Three of us with hearts like pine
That the lightnings splinter,
Clean of cleave and white of grain—
Three of us afoot again,
With a rapture fresh and fine |
35 |
| As a
spring in winter!
All the hills are red and gold;
And the horns of vision
Call across the crackling air
Till we shout back to them there,
|
40 |
Taken
captive in the hold
Of their bluff derision.
Spray-salt gusts of ocean blow
From the rocky headlands;
Overhead the wild geese fly,
|
45 |
Honking
in the autumn sky;
Black sinister flocks of crow
Settle on the dead lands.
Three of us in love with life,
Roaming like wild cattle,
|
50 |
With
the stinging air a-reel
As a warrior might feel
The swift orgasm of the knife
Slay him in mid-battle.
Three of us to march abreast
|
55 |
Down
the hills of morrow!
With a clean heart and a few
Friends to clench the spirit to!—
Leave the gods to rule the rest,
And good-by, sorrow! |
60 |
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