Poems (Forrest)/Laughter

For works with similar titles, see Laughter.

LAUGHTER

To-day it is of laughter I would write.
The babe that on a doting mother's knee
Tilts its first carol at a world of tears,
The schoolgirl, merry with her skipping-rope. . . .
Maybe she finds between the rise and fall
Of hempen arches, nearness to the sky
(As though she kept a feather of lost wings
To float her in the pathways of the blue).

Pan, sprightly in his green-leaf pavisade,
Shaking the glossy twigs with mirth o' Spring,
Silenus, jovial on the rotund cask,
Because of some smart sally Bacchus made—
Bacchus with vine-leaves in his ruddy hair,
Impatient of the witchery of nymphs.

To-day it is of laughter I would write.
The chuckle in the shallow of the streams
That rollick down the mountain, where the fern
Primly withdraws itself from foolish jest
And bends its head as though it wore a cowl,
A Capuchin of bracken! And the laugh
Of black-browed witches in the moaning pines,
Witches with apple cheeks and amber breasts,
That ride a trotting broomstick at the clouds!
And there toss, in their levity, pert words
At the serene aloofness of the stars!
The laughter of the sun, as he sinks down
With crimson lips pressed to soft Twilight's mouth,
Succeeded by the sportive Lady Moon,
Whose strange, white whimsies make the brown earth smile
To silver ripples on the tawny hedge,
And dimples on the face of the lagoon,
And jocund darts into the night-dark scrub,
Making a quivering joy of hidden trails. . . .

To-day it is of laughter I would write.
Nasturtiums, winking through the blinding rain;
Orange and yellow, or a tango red,
Insisting that life, after all, is gay
Under the novice veil of fine white showers.
Or the great-throated jollity of crowds,
Who see their favourite comedian prance
Between the velvet curtains of a stage—
The laughter that makes strangers into friends. . . .

To-day it is of laughter I would write.
Some trembling woman in a lover's arms,
Whose laugh holds the first carol of the babe.
The gaiety of schoolgirls, and the throb
Of mating Springtime in the pipes of Pan,
Laughing (she knows not why) because of all
She yields to him . . . for nothing else but Love!

To-day it is of laughter I would write.
Laughter that sets a fool's cap on the brow
Of the grey-featured, iron face of Life!