Adventure (Smith)
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Let us leave the hateful town
With its stale, forgotten lies;
Far beneath renewing skies,
Where the piny slope goes down,
All with April love and laughter—
None to leer and none to frown—
We shall pass and follow after
Shattered lace of waters spun
On a steep and stony loom
Down the depths of laurel-gloom.
Finding there a world re-made
In the fern-embowered shade,
Weaving bright oblivion
Still from frailest blossom-trove,
We shall mix our wilding love
With the woodland and the sun.
Let us loiter, hand in hand,
Hearing but the heart's command,
Half our steps by kisses stayed,
Prove the spring-enchanted glade;
Breast to breast and limb to limb,
Seize our happiness and bind it—
Lose the pulse of time and find it,
Free as vagrant seraphim.
Ever leave regret and rue
To the dutiful and jealous
Fools that are not near to tell us
All the things we should not do.
Though the bedded ferns be broken,
And dishevelled blossoms lie
On the rumpled moss for token
Of the day's mad errantry—
Still the tacit pines will keep
Darkly in their sighing sleep
All the sweet and perilous story;
And the oaks and willows hoary
For unheeding ears will tell
Only things ineffable;
And the later eyes that look
On the pool-delaying brook,
Shall not see within its glass
Two that came to kiss and pass.
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1961, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 62 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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