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.
And that is why, when he comes to die,He’ll have an easier sentenceThan 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 never could see the Rule of Three,But he knows a rule of thumbBetter than Euclid’s, better than yours,Or the teachers’ yet to come.
He knows the smell of the hydromelAs if two and two were five;And hides it away for a year and a dayIn his own hexagonal hive.
Out in the day, hap-hazard, alone,Booms the old vagrant hummer,With only his whim to pilot himThrough 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 sailBut his crazy log can reckon.

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