The Sea Gypsy

by Richard Hovey

I am fevered with the sunset,
I am fretful with the bay,
For the wander-thirst is on me
And my soul is in Cathay.

~ ✥ ✧ ✦ ✧ ✥ ~

There’s a schooner in the offing,
With her topsails shot with fire,
And my heart has gone aboard her
For the Islands of Desire.

~ ✥ ✧ ✦ ✧ ✥ ~

I must forth again to-morrow!
With the sunset I must be
Hull down on the trail of rapture
In the wonder of the sea.

     

The Road To Anywhere

Across the places deep and dim,
And places brown and bare,
It reaches to the planet’s rim
The Road to Anywhere.

Now east is east, and west is west,
But north lies in between,
And he is blest whose feet have prest
The road that s cool and green.

The road of roads for them that dare
The lightest whim obey,
To follow where the moose or bear
Has brushed his headlong way.

The secrets that these tangles house
Are step by step revealed,
While to the sun the grass and boughs
A store of odors yield.

More sweet these odors in the sun
Than swim in chemist’s jars;
And when the fragrant day is done,
Night and a shoal of stars.

Oh, east is east, and west is west,
But north lies full and fair;
And blest is he who follows free
The Road to Anywhere.

B. L. T.

Bert Leston Taylor