Page:Songs from Vagabondia (1897).djvu/39
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His morals are mixed, but his will is fixed;
He prospers after his kind,
And follows an instinct, compass-sure,
The philosophers call blind.
He prospers after his kind,
And follows an instinct, compass-sure,
The philosophers call blind.
And that is why, when he comes to die,
He’ll have an easier sentence
Than some one I know who thinks just so,
And then leaves room for repentance.
He’ll have an easier sentence
Than some one I know who thinks just so,
And then leaves room for repentance.
He never could box the compass round;
He does n’t know port from starboard;
But he knows the gates of the Sundown Straits,
Where the choicest goods are harbored.
He does n’t know port from starboard;
But he knows the gates of the Sundown Straits,
Where the choicest goods are harbored.
He never could see the Rule of Three,
But he knows a rule of thumb
Better than Euclid’s, better than yours,
Or the teachers’ yet to come.
But he knows a rule of thumb
Better than Euclid’s, better than yours,
Or the teachers’ yet to come.
He knows the smell of the hydromel
As if two and two were five;
And hides it away for a year and a day
In his own hexagonal hive.
As if two and two were five;
And hides it away for a year and a day
In his own hexagonal hive.
Out in the day, hap-hazard, alone,
Booms the old vagrant hummer,
With only his whim to pilot him
Through the splendid vast of summer.
Booms the old vagrant hummer,
With only his whim to pilot him
Through the splendid vast of summer.
He steers and steers on the slant of the gale,
Like the fiend or Vanderdecken;
And there’s never an unknown course to sail
But his crazy log can reckon.
Like the fiend or Vanderdecken;
And there’s never an unknown course to sail
But his crazy log can reckon.
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