A Vagabond Song

Don't you love that title? I came across this poem in a book I am reading (and enjoying, by the way; it's called Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner), and I just had to share it. It's wonderful! Maybe a little dramatic, but so much what I wish I could say about autumn that I want to say it anyway, even though it's someone else's words. Colby and I say to each other every day, can you believe it's STILL fall? Virginia is a wonderful place.

A Vagabond Song (by Bliss Carman)

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.