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University of Northern Iowa
Gypsy FiresAuthor(s): Harry LeeSource: The North American Review, Vol. 228, No. 2 (Aug., 1929), p. 198Published by: University of Northern IowaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25110815 .
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198 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW
the Walker can turn discomfiture to good account. Is he not, by the
very circumstances of his misfortune, shown to be a man of the fields and
woods, a Nimrod, a mighty hunter?
Does he not commune with Nature, at one with God's great out-of
doors? And if the low jests continue,
may he not pardonably accept that
too, with the air of one who knows ?
Assuredly. For, as of old, sweet
dalliance was ever one of the chief attributes of the Green Guild, the
Walkers, those intimate associates of
hedge and by-path, who, as we
know, were ever ready to take the
protected hare and to pluck the
forbidden cherry.
Gypsy Fires
By Harry Lee
The gypsy folk are weird, wild folk,
The wide, wide world their home, And they are kin to imp and elf, To goblin and to gnome.
By blackthorn hedge and heathered hill, By ruined brig and cairn, A trundling, toppling
caravan
From grand-dam to the bairn.
They go, they go, through wind and rain, Like brawling, burly bees, At dusk they halt their mangy nags Among the wayside trees.
They build a fire by the road, And while the gray owls hoot, And while the blue smoke hovers, They count their ill-got loot.
Clad in the garish light they dance With crashing tambourine, With jangling bangles, wrist and arm,
In rags of red and green.
The gypsy folk are weird, wild folk, And they must wander on, The nomadie is over them
Ere ever breaks the dawn.
And though I go the ordered way, And seek the common
goal, The glamour of the gypsy fires Is dancing in my soul.
This content downloaded from 195.34.79.223 on Fri, 13 Jun 2014 00:44:37 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
