WHETHER from India's burning plains, Or wild Bohemia's domains, Your steps were first directed; Or whether ye be Egypt's sons, Whose stream, like Nile's, for ever runs With sources undetected: Arabs of Europe! Gipsy race! Your Eastern manners, garb, and face, Appear a strange chimaera; None, none but you can now be styled Romantic, picturesque, and wild, In this prosaic aera. Ye sole freebooters of the wood, Since Adam Bell and Robin Hood: Kept everywhere asunder From other tribes -- King, Church, and State Spurning, and only dedicate To freedom, sloth, and plunder; Your forest-camp -- the forms one sees Banditti-like amid the trees, The ragged donkeys grazing, The Sybil's eye prophetic, bright With flashes of the fitful light Beneath the caldron blazing, -- O'er my young mind strange terrors threw: Thy History gave me, Moore Carew! A more exalted notion Of Gipsy life; nor can I yet Gaze on your tents, and quite forget My former deep emotion. For "auld lang syne" I'll not maltreat Yon pseudo-tinker, though the cheat, As sly as thievish Reynard, Instead of mending kettles, prowls, To make foul havoc of my fowls, And decimate my hen-yard. Come thou, too, black-eyed lass, and try That potent skill in palmistry, Which sixpences can wheedle; Mine is a friendly cottage -- here No snarling mastiff need you fear, No Constable or Beadle. 'Tis yours, I know, to draw at will Upon futurity a bill, And Plutus to importune; -- Discount the bill -- take half yourself, Give me the balance of the pelf, And both may laugh at fortune. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...YOUNG BULLFROGS by CARL SANDBURG THE SEALS IN PENOBSCOT BAY by KAREN SWENSON SONGS FOR MY MOTHER: 2. HER HANDS by ANNA HEMPSTEAD BRANCH SONNET: 46 by WILLIAM DRUMMOND OF HAWTHORNDEN FRIENDS BEYOND by THOMAS HARDY THE REVENGE; A BALLAD OF THE FLEET by ALFRED TENNYSON PRAIRIE MUSIC by NELLIE COOLEY ALDER THE SINGERS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY by GEORGE BARLOW (1847-1913) |