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THE ROAD TO ANYWHERE
Across the places deep and dim,
And places brown and bare,
It reaches to the planet’s rim –
The Road to Anywhere.
Now east is east, and west is west,
But north lies in between
And his is blest whose feet have prest
The road that’s cool and green.
The road of roads for them that dare
The lightest whim obey,
To follow where the moose or bear
Has brushed his headlong way.
The secrets that these tangles house
Are step by step revealed,
While to the sun the grass and boughs
A store of odors yield.
More sweet these odors in the sun
That swim in chemist’s jars;
And when the fragrant day is done,
Night – and a shoal of stars.
Oh, east is east, and west is west,
But north lies full and fair;
And blest is he who follows free
The Road to Anywhere.
INVOCATION
O Comic Spirit, hovering overhead,
With sage’s brows and finely-tempered smile,
From whose bowed lips a silvery laugh
is sped
At pedantry, stupidity, and guile, –
So visioned by that sage on whom you bent
Always a look of perfect sympathy,
Whose laugh, like yours, was never idly
spent, –
Look, Spirit, sometimes fellowly on me!
Instruct and guide me in the gentle art
Of thoughtful laughter – once satyric noise;
Vouchsafe to me, of your perfect poise.
Keep me from bitterness, contempt, and
scorn,
From anger, pride impatience, and disdain.
When I am self-deceived your smile shall
warn,
Your volleyed laughter set me right again.
Am I inspired to mirth or mockery,
Grant, Spirit, that it be not overdrawn;
And am I moved to malice, let it be
Only “the sunny malice of a faun.”
CANOPUS
When quacks with pills political would
dope us,
When politics absorbs the livelong day,
I like to think of the star Canopus,
So far, so far away.
Greatest of visioned suns, they say who
list ‘em;
To weigh it science always must despair.
Its shell would hold our whole dinged solar
system,
Nor ever know ‘twas there.
When temporary chairmen utter speeches,
And frenzied henchmen howl their
battle
hymns,
My thoughts float out across the cosmic
reaches
To where Canopus swims.
When men are calling names and making
faces,
And all the world’s ajangle and ajar,
I meditate on interstellar spaces
And smoke a mild seegar.
For after one has had about a week of
The arguments of friends as well as
foes,
A star that has no parallax to speak of
Conduces to repose.
SUNDOWN
When my sun of life is low,
When the dewy shadows creep,
Say for me before I go,
“Now I lay me down to sleep.”
I am at the journey’s end,
I have sown and I must reap;
There are no more ways to mend –
Now I lay me down to sleep.
Nothing more to doubt or dare,
Nothing more to give or keep;
Say for me the children’s prayer,
“Now I lay me down to sleep.”
Who has learned along the way –
Primrose path or stony steep –
More wisdom than to say,
“Now I lay me down to sleep.”
What have you more wise to tell
When the shadows round me creep?…
All is over, all is well…
Now I lay me down to sleep.
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