Classic Poem

Oh ! the strange wild thrill of a motor flight
In the still, clear cold of an Autumn night,
When led by the lure of the straight white road
The car leaps loose to the engine's goad,
And the front lamps shine down the distant track
And the small red point at the motor's back
Sends a crimson glow on the quick-left trail
Like Antares' eye in the scorpion's tail. —
How the brain responds to the pulsing throb,
And the soul replies to the wind's faint sob
As it meets the branch for a cool embrace
Of the Autumn trees in their leafless lace.
I look straight up in the wide-lit skies
And I know that the vaulted depth replies,
For it bids me join in the planets' race
While it offers the prize of a stellar place —
Till I dream that Auriga, charioteer,
Is at the wheel, and the whirling sphere
Answers my dream as I meet the stars. —
Orion's belt, with its golden bars,
Is in my grasp; and a hunting-song
Echoes the meadow road along,
Borne on the breath of the midnight breeze
Chanted by distant Pleiades. —

The hill sweeps low as we skirt the stream
Where, upside down, with a laughing gleam
The dipper flings from the milky way
A frothing spoonful of yellow spray. —
And air and water, and earth and sky
Call out " Good Speed " to us rushing by —
We are one with the spaces, and one with the dark,
Alive as the flash of electric spark,
In tune with nature, at one with man,
WhOhas made us part of the cosmic plan —
By the child of his brain, which he curbs and reins,
Or hurls headlong through the midnight plains —
Oh! the strange, wild thrill of a motor flight
In the still, clear cold of an Autumn night!