Wednesday, September 22, 2010

A Vagabond Song


It’s fall now, but to me, it isn’t really autumn until the first frosty morning, when the floor boards are like ice to my bare feet and a glaze of white frost tips each blade of grass on the yard. Below is my personal favorite autumn poem, A Vagabond Song, by William Bliss Carman. It's so beautifully visual.



A Vagabond Song

THERE is something in the autumn that is native to my blood—

Touch of manner, hint of mood;

And my heart is like a rhyme,

With the yellow and the purple and the crimson keeping time.

The scarlet of the maples can shake me like a cry

5

Of bugles going by.

And my lonely spirit thrills

To see the frosty asters like a smoke upon the hills.

There is something in October sets the gypsy blood astir;

We must rise and follow her,

10

When from every hill of flame

She calls and calls each vagabond by name.

- Wm Bliss Carman


Wm Bliss Carman (1861-1929)