The Joys of the Road

To R. H. NOW the joys of the road are chiefly these: A crimson touch on the hard-wood trees; A vagrant’s morning wide and blue, In early fall, when the wind walks, too; A shadowy highway cool and brown, Alluring up and enticing down From rippled water to dappled swamp, The outward eye, the quiet will, From purple glory to scarlet pomp; And the striding heart from hill to hill; The tempter apple over the fence; The cobweb bloom on the yellow quince; The palish asters along the wood,— A lyric touch of the solitude; An open hand, an easy shoe, And a hope to make the day go through,— Another to sleep with, and a third To wake me up at the voice of a bird; The resonant, far-listening morn, And the hoarse whisper of the corn; The crickets mourning their comrades lost, In the night’s retreat from the gathering frost; (Or is it their slogan, plaintive and shrill, As they beat on their corselets, valiant still?) A hunger fit for the kings of the sea, And a loaf of bread for Dickon and me; A thirst like that of the Thirsty Sword, And a jug of cider on the board; An idle noon, a bubbling spring, The sea in the pine-tops murmuring; A scrap of gossip at the ferry; A comrade neither glum nor merry, Asking nothing, revealing naught, But minting his words from a fund of thought, A keeper of silence eloquent, Needy, yet royally well content, Of the mettled breed, yet abhorring strife, And full of the mellow juice of life, A taster of wine, with an eye for a maid, Never too bold and never afraid, Never heart-whole, never heart-sick (These are the things I worship in Dick), No fidget and no reformer, just A calm observer of ought and must, A lover of books, but a reader of man, No cynic and no charlatan, Who never defers and never demands, But, smiling, takes the world in his hands,— Seeing it good as when God first saw And gave it the weight of his will for law. And oh the joy that is never won, But follows and follows the journeying sun, By marsh and tide, by meadow and stream, A will-o’-the-wind, a light-o’-dream, Delusion afar, delight anear, From morrow to morrow, from year to year, A jack-o’-lantern, a fairy fire, A dare, a bliss, and a desire! The racy smell of the forest loam, When the stealthy, sad-heart leaves go home; (O leaves, O leaves, I am one with you, Of the mould and the sun, and the wind and the dew!) The broad gold wake of the afternoon; The silent fleck of the cold new moon: The sound of the hollow sea’s release From stormy tumult to starry peace; With only another league to wend, And two brown arms at the journey’s end: These are the joys of the open road— For him who travels without a load.