Love-songs of the Open Road / Kendall Banning (3 poems)

Love-songs of the Open Road

Morning

The morning wind is wooing me; her lips have swept my brow.
Was ever dawn so sweet before? the land so fair as now?
The wanderlust is luring to wherever roads may lead,
While yet the dew is on the hedge. So how can I but heed?

The forest whispers of its shades; of haunts where we have been,—
And where may friends be better made than under God’s green inn? 
Your mouth is warm and laughing and your voice is calling low,
While yet the dew is on the hedge. So how can I but go?

Noon

The bees are humming, humming in the clover;
        The bobolink is singing in the rye;      
The brook is purling, purling in the valley,
        And the river’s laughing, radiant, to the sky!

The buttercups are nodding in the sunlight;
        The winds are whispering, whispering to the pine;
The joy of June has found me; as an aureole it’s crowned me    
        Because, oh best belovèd, you are mine!


Night

In Arcady by moonlight
    (Where only lovers go),
There is a pool where only
    The fairest roses grow.      

Why are the moonlit roses
    So sweet beyond compare?
Among their purple shadows
    My love is waiting there.

*    *    *    *    *

To Arcady by moonlight      
    The roads are open wide,
But only joy can enter
    And only joy abide.

There is the peace unending
    That perfect faith can know —      
In Arcady by moonlight,
    Where only lovers go.

~~
Kendall Banning (1879-1944)
from Poetry, January 1913

[Poems are in the public domain in Canada, the United States, and the European Union]

Kendall Banning biography