Classic Poem

Through the winding lanes where willows lean,
And the stately elms their shadows throw,
Past the woodland bowers of sunlit green,
Where the dusky brave, with bended bow,
In the haloed time of the long ago,
Would soft, like a stealthy panther, steal,
We fling dark care to the winds that blow,
And spin away on the whirling wheel.

By the highways broad, where, fair, is seen
The bloom of the alder, white as snow,
Down hillsides steep on the road between
The vineyards wide with their vines a-row,
Nigh meads where the murmuring brooklets flow
And rushes tall in the breezes reel,
We fling dark care to the winds that blow,
And spin away on the whirling wheel.

On days when spring is a verdant queen
And bright-eyed buttercups gleam and glow,
'Mid hours when the forest's emerald sheen
Is scorched by suns that the tropics know,
In autumn-tide, ere the winter's woe,
Whether bells of morn or eve outpeal,
We fling dark care to the winds that blow,
And spin away on the whirling wheel.

Come, riders all, be ye swift or slow,
And join in the praise of the steed of steel! —
We fling dark care to the winds that blow,
And spin away on the whirling wheel.