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

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,

When from every hill of flame

She calls and calls each vagabond by name.

 

-Bliss Carman, Modern American and British Poetry,

edited by Louis Untermeyer – p. 95

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