Volume 6, No. 2, June, 1918

The I n I c r n a I i o n a 1 i s t Page twenty-five
The Vagabond
I wander alone upon the earth.
I have no friend, no wife, no child to call my own.
Not a soul shares the rigors or the joys of my way.
And yet, I am but rarely sad,
Perhaps- there is a little sadness in my days,
Like that which creeps into the days of Indian summer
A sadness whimsical, transitory
That casts transparent shadows
On gleaming colors and gay fancies
And quivers in the music of the sudden gusts of wind
That set the leaves to rustling down the footpaths
By slow rivers.
But for the most part I am glad.
And why not
be glad!
Though I am scorned and outcast,
I am far more free
Than men who in the cities madly labor
On the treadwheel of the Money God/
Forever hoping to reach Freedom on the step above,
But forever finding it no nearer.
Their endless toil makes drab and their petty vices tarnish
The souls which should be radiant.
Their futile scorn but gives me courage to go on my way.
Yea, I
am glad!
WO Poe ms
"We're glad to live! So glad to live!"
And in th.2 long days
When the city-bound bend limp and joyless over galling
tasks,
That cramp their muscles, dull their eyes and numb their
souls, ,
I trudge far down my winding, luring road,
My muscles sinewy like the young green tree,
Head up before the friendly onslaughts of the winds.
And when those wonder-working winds,
That spread the pollen in the spring and the ripe seed in the
fall,
Sing to me their wild, exotic songs,
My soul, care-free and joyous, answers them,
As does the meadow lark.
Then, too, there are the nights.
When city men, searching for the day's lost joy
In dives and tawdry dance halls,
Drown their souls in uncouth, rakish clamors,
I watch the moon rise silently and gild the fog-haze on the
hills;
I watch the short, swift journeys of the shooting stars,
So like careers of humans mad for glory.
One moment they blaze forth meteoric, dazzling,
And then vanish,
Leaving but the question whence they come and whence they
go.
And pondering on that question,
Out there beneath the stern, blue vault of Heaven,
I seem almost to grasp the Infinite ....
Yea, but I
am glad!
—ELEANOR WENTWORTH.
For days which men in cities spend in paying
For a Past that was a burden and saving
For a Future that may never come,
I spend in glorying in the Here and Now.
Though I am alone,
My loneliness gives me time
To joy in Life's evanescent glories,
Which the toil-driven in haste pass by
Or vainly dream on.
'
Immaturity
A gaffer scored a gay young boor:
"Young man," he carped, "You're immature!
A cub, a tadpole, just a sprout!
The way you prance and gag and spout
Is more than man can long endure.
"Young sir, you're callow, immature!"
So, on sweet summer mornings,
When men, bound to the grinding wheels of Commerce,
Wake, unwilling, to the summons of the city,
Protesting, as they hear the, clang of cars, the shriek of
whistles,
The dull, increasing roar of wagons on the pavement,
"Must we still
go on!"
I drift from dream-free slumbers into a fresh new day,
And, as the morning wind moves softly
Through tall grasses and low-bending trees,
I listen tensely while the first faint stirrings of the Forest
World ,
Swell mightier and mightier into a song that sends up to the
sun the cry
"Oh," cried the wag, "Now, you don't say!
That means I'm far from your decay.
Go on and rave! Maturity,
Old sire, is no decoy for me.
The ripe vine falls into decline;
The sprout has still to be a vine!
"I know if you but had your way.
For my red blood you'd give me whey,
And for my spontaneity,
Old dogmas tempered carefully.
Methuselah, I
Them all.
do abjure
Hurray, I'm immature!"
—ELEANOR WENTWORTH.