Classic Poem

1

Doctor , I want to be out of this:
There is no play nor profit here;
'Tis all so chemical and queer;
For things outworn or things I wish
Life now is stale, now feverish —
I cannot sleep.

2

A burden on my heart is lain
Of thin, delirious desires;
I feel the flash of eerie fires
In the cloudy opal of my brain;
I wish I knew some medicine
To cure it all.

3

There was a girl named Jill I met
Vacation time at Juniper,
And I was like a boy with her
Had never cared for women yet;
I mind how in the red sunset
She called to me.

4

Among the hills I heard her sing,
And in glad mood I went to her;
I thought the emerald glimmer
Of her slant eyes a magic thing;
Some oddness in her raimenting,
Some fashion old,

5

Just a touch on a simple gown
Of the silk of some past dynasty,
And she wore a collar of lace quaintly
At her tan throat; her hair was down;
Her shapely arms were bare and brown:
And she called to me.

6

O, she was a jolly hoyden, Jill!
But the savor of her lips to me
Was sweet as a late, wild strawberry
Found large and red on a sunburnt hill;
And I yielded to her pretty will
And waywardness.

7

Give me the fine, cool touch of her!
I've had my fill of sweets and sours
With merry lovers of late hours,
And little now my pulses stir
For game, or dance, or theatre,
Or deep carouse.

8

I think to live with such a lass
Were better than the best of these:
Unfailing as the field daisies,
And clean and constant as the grass:
All green delight young summer has
I found in her.

9

Now I nor wine nor women prize;
But I'd follow you up any hill
For just a pail of water, Jill,
And the right to look in your slant eyes
Till life grew strong and sane and wise
For me again.

10

But a burden on my heart is lain
Of thin, delirious desires;
I feel the flash of eerie fires
In the cloudy opal of my brain;
I wish I knew some medicine
To cure it all.

11

Doctor, if I could hear her sing
As 'mong the hills at Juniper
I think this pestilent fever
Would pass like vapor scattering
Before a breeze, or else something
Come fine as that!

12

For even just to think of her
Is grateful to me as the prime
Glory of the morning-time;
A memory in lavender
Of youth foot-loose in a wide summer
She is to me.

13

Doctor, I need to be free, I guess!
Free to go once more to her
Among the hills in the white clover
And share in her cool waywardness;
'Twould cure me of this dull sickness,
And I would sleep.

14

Yes, I would sleep with a sleep supreme
Till all that frets me now were gone;
And I would wake in young fashion
To healthy ways of hill and stream,
And all the joy of life would seem
To be with Jill.

15

So handsome she is in the hill-country!
Set in her sunbrowned face slant-wise,
Doctor, she has green, glorious eyes;
Oh, if I were only free,
If I could rise of God's mercy
And go to her!

16

But a burden on my heart is lain
Of thin, delirious desires;
I feel the flash of eerie fires
In the cloudy opal of my brain;
I wish I knew some medicine
To cure it all!