Classic Poem

When falls the gentle summer rain,
And caution bids us stay within,
I vex me not with thoughts of pain
That I may not the hillsides win;
That I may not the country roam
At will, and speed o'er hill and dale,
But rest contentedly at home
With stores of wealth that never fail.

A miner I become, and here
Surrounded by vast lodes of thought,
Great messages in woe or cheer
From out recesses hid are brought—
A nugget now of Wisdom's gold
From Sages past perhaps I find,
Or possibly some ledge will hold
Soul-metal of some rarer kind.

Would I commune with lyric bird
In glowing ecstasies of song?
Here are the Poets' numbers heard
That to the heavenly choir belong.
The songs that tell of youthful dreams;
The songs that sing undying love,
And through the cloud-rifts grant us gleams
Of our immortal treasure-trove

Or do I seek adventure swift,
Some knightly deed of prowess rare,
Mine eye to otherward I shift
And that I seek awaits me there—
The heroes of a doughty age,
Greece, Rome, or mediæval France,
Wait on the turning of some page
In tourney bold, or courtly dance.

Their loves, their hates, I share them both.
In perils I am at their side.
When war's afoot I'm nothing loath
To mount and forth to battle ride;
And when some feat of arms is done
By Cavalier for Ladye Fayre,
The smiling prizes nobly won
Are mine as well as his to share.

On enterprise of pirate sort,
Again, I freely may embark,
Nor later fear the ill-report
That follows bloody deeds and dark;
But fearless of all consequence
To life, or limb, or good-repute,
I join in the incontinence
Of shambles for the sake of loot.

Or be my mood of nobler cast,
And wider, stranger worlds my quest,
Before, or eke behind, some mast
I seek discovery with the best—
Columbus, Ponce, De Soto—all
The heroes of a valiant mould
Within some cover wait my call
To do again the deeds of old.

Or best of all, if so I will
To seek a more ennobling zone,
And walk with men inspiring still,
The greatest souls the world hath known,
From all the list of truly great
'Tis mine to choose my company;
To join them in their gloried state,
Or share their grim Gethsemane.

When falls the gentle summer rain,
And caution bids us stay within,
I vex me not with murmurs vain
That I the hillsides may not win;
But here within these quiet nooks,
Content as Omar 'neath his vine,
I roam through my belovéd books,
And all the universe is mine.