White bosom on a Summer day, And fragrant as the hawthorn spray. Let Dionysus and his crew, Garlanded, drain their fevered brew, And in the orgiastic bowl Drug and besot the sacred soul; This simple country cup we drain Knows not the ghosts of sin and pain, No fates or furies follow him Who sips from its cream-mantled rim. Yea! all his thoughts are country-sweet, And safe the walking of his feet, However hard and long the way-- With country sleep to end the day. To drain this cup no man shall rue-- The innocent madness of the dew Who shall repent, or frenzy fine Of morning star, or the divine Inebriation of the hours When May roofs in the world with flowers! About this cup the swallows skim, And the low milking-star hangs dim Across the meadows, and the moon Is near in heaven_--_the young moon; And murmurs sweet of field and hill Loiter awhile, and all is still. As in some chapel dear to Pan, The fair milk glimmers in the can, And, in the silence cool and white, The cream mounts through the listening night; And, all around the sleeping house, You hear the breathing of the cows, And drowsy rattle of the chain, Till lo! the blue-eyed morn again_. CHAPTER XIX A GROWL ABOUT AMERICAN COUNTRY HOTELS Though Colin and I had been walking but a very few days, after the first day or two it seemed as though we had been out on the road for weeks; as though, indeed, we had spent our lives in the open air; and it needed no more than our brief experience for us to realize what one so often reads of those who do actually live their lives out-of-doors, gypsies, sailors, cowboys and the like--how intolerable to them is a roof, and how literally they gasp for air and space in the confined walls of cities. Bed in the bush with stars to see, Bread I dip in the river-- There's the life for a man like me, There's the life forever.