free-verse60 lines
Three Of A Kind.
by Bliss Carman (William)Three of us without a care
In the red September
Tramping down the roads of Maine,
Making merry with the rain,
With the fellow winds a-fare
Where the winds remember.
Three of us with shocking hats,
Tattered and unbarbered,
Happy with the splash of mud,
With the highways in our blood,
Bearing down on Deacon Platt's
Where last year we harbored.
We've come down from Kennebec,
Tramping since last Sunday,
Loping down the coast of Maine,
With the sea for a refrain,
And the maples neck and neck
All the way to Fundy.
Sometimes lodging in an inn,
Cosey as a dormouse--
Sometimes sleeping on a knoll
With no rooftree but the Pole--
Sometimes halely welcomed in
At an old-time farmhouse.
Loafing under ledge and tree,
Leaping over boulders,
Sitting on the pasture bars,
Hail-fellow with storm or stars--
Three of us alive and free,
With unburdened shoulders!
Three of us with hearts like pine
That the lightnings splinter,
Clean of cleave and white of grain--
Three of us afoot again,
With a rapture fresh and fine
As a spring in winter!
All the hills are red and gold;
And the horns of vision
Call across the crackling air
Till we shout back to them there,
Taken captive in the hold
Of their bluff derision.
Spray-salt gusts of ocean blow
From the rocky headlands;
Overhead the wild geese fly,
Honking in the autumn sky;
Black sinister flocks of crow
Settle on the dead lands.
Three of us in love with life,
Roaming like wild cattle,
With the stinging air a-reel
As a warrior might feel
The swift orgasm of the knife
Slay him in mid-battle.
Three of us to march abreast
Down the hills of morrow!
With a clean heart and a few
Friends to clench the spirit to!--
Leave the gods to rule the rest,
And good-by, sorrow!