Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE SONG OF THE TRAMPS, by PATRICK MACGILL



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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE SONG OF THE TRAMPS, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: The eager hands will never take us back
Last Line: Sure the world is ours to revel in and roam.
Subject(s): Gypsies; Wandering & Wanderers; Gipsies


THE eager hands will never take us back,
The luring eyes will never draw us home,
With the changing heaven o'er us, and the white road stretched before us,
Sure the world is ours to revel in and roam —
We have padded it, alone, afar, apart,
We have roughed it to the ultimate extremes,
Where the blazing dawn-tints kindle, or the sun-kissed rivers dwindle
In a land of fairy fantasies and dreams.

Would we linger in the city and the stench,
The alleys and the fetid walls amid,
In the dirt beyond all telling of the festered, filthy dwelling
And the gutter degradation — God forbid!
We are not the fools you reckon us to be,
Our woebegone appearances are shammed,
Tho' we act the discontented, on the byways unfrequented,
We are n't so incorrigibly damned.

We doss it 'neath the timid shaky stars,
Where the mountains shrink and cower overawed,
In the gaunt mysterious places, with the dew upon our faces,
While the breathless night goes by in silence shod,
As the pallid, leprous, moon above us frets,
By the fitful fire-flames flickering undersized,
We think as men unshriven, of an evil unforgiven,
Of the many hopes we never realized.

Oh! the dreaming and the fancy and the hope,
The wonder and the worry of it all,
The gipsy blood that's flowing through our veins will keep us going
On the road while thrushes sing or sparrows fall;
By meadows waving lazily and slow,
By streamlets singing songs of wild desires,
And the eyes of heaven peeping will keep watch above us sleeping,
And the dawn will see the ashes of our fires.

To the wealth of Mother Nature we are heirs,
The skies of opal, amber, sapphire hue,
The moorland and the meadows, the sunshine and the shadows,
We love them — for we've nothing else to do!
The eager hands will never lure us back,
The plaintive eyes can never draw us home,
With the heaven bending o'er us and the white road stretched before us,
Sure the world is ours to revel in and roam.





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