• Author: Pardy, George T.
• Editor: B-7413
• Newspaper: The Umpire volume 6
• Page Number:
• Date: 10 3 1917
• Tags:
• poetry

THE OPEN ROAD

In the hush and the glow of the morning, the flush of the new-dawning day, I’m footing it over the meadows, the trail of the wanderer’s way; Over there on the horizon drifting you can see the black smoke of the freight That dumped me off here while a-swinging along at a twenty-mile gait. In clusters of white on the hedges the fresh-opened blossoms are seen; There’s a carpet of velvet beneath me resplendent in gold and in green, Where the buttercups, daffcdils, daisies lie low in the dew-scented grass, While Robin, who dwells in the woodland, is lilting a tune as I pass. You may call me a tramp and you're welcome, the name doesn’t matter to me, For the glad world greets me at present, whatever my finish may be. I have borne the burden of toiling, but, thank God, I have shifted the load, And I’m tasting the sweets of adventure, the endless delights of the road. Forgotten the noise and the squalor, the grime of the streets and the town; Out here, where all nature rejoices, with the sun and the sky smiling down On a vagabond glad to be living, the past and its miseries seem But a shadow delusion of fancy, the vision of some evil dream. I fear not what fate may await me, I care not for hearthstone or home, The world is my heritage splendid, a gypsy unfettered I roam, And my pulses are throbbing in measure the songs that the nesting birds sing, For I'm quit of the curse of the city and freed by the call of the Spring.

—George T. Pardy.