PEN AND INK.
Ye wanderers that were my sires,
Who read men’s fortunes in the hand,
Who voyaged with your smithy fires
From waste to waste across the land,
Why did you leave for garth and town
Your life by heath and river’s brink,
Why lay your gipsy freedom down
And doom your child to Pen and Ink?
You wearied of the wild-wood meal
That crowned, or failed to crown, the day;
Too honest or too tame to steal
You broke into the beaten way;
Plied loom or awl like other men,
And learned to love the guineas’ chink—
Oh, recreant sires, who doomed me then
To earn so few—with Pen and Ink!
Where it hath fallen the tree must lie.
’Tis over late for me to roam,
Yet the caged bird who hears the cry
Of his wild fellows fleeting home,
May feel no sharper pang than mine,
Who seem to hear, whene’er I think,
Spate in the stream, and wind in pine,
Call me to quit dull Pen and Ink.
For then the spirit wandering,
That slept within the blood, awakes;
For then the summer and the spring
I fain would meet by streams and lakes;
But ah, my Birthright long is sold,
But custom chains me, link on link,
And I must get me, as of old,
Back to my tools, to Pen and Ink.
A DREAM.
Why will you haunt my sleep?
You know it may not be,
The grave is wide and deep,
That sunders you and me;
In bitter dreams we reap
The sorrow we have sown,
And I would I were asleep,
Forgotten and alone!
We knew and did not know,
We saw and did not see,
The nets that long ago
Fate wove for you and me;
The cruel nets that keep
The birds that sob and moan,
And I would we were asleep,
Forgotten and alone!
THE SINGING ROSE.
‘La Rose qui chante et l’herbe qui égare.’