Classic Poem

'Twas richly vermilion and flagrantly yellow
When brought from the region of sunlit plateaus,
But, softened by service and restfully mellow,
It swings in the grove where the rivulet flows.
Its ring-bolts are tarnished, its spreaders unvarnished;
It sags at an angle of forty degrees;
With needles of balsam its meshes are garnished—
The Mexican Hammock that hangs from the trees.
The Mexican Hammock,
The grass-woven Hammock,
The trusty old Hammock
That droops from the trees.

When, sick of the city's perpetual riot,
I come for the healing that Silence bestows,
O'ershadowed by green-tasseled curtains of quiet,
It offers a bounteous depth of repose.
So softly allaying and balmily swaying,
It woos with its motion the health-laden breeze
That soon down the River of Dreams I am straying,
Adrift in the Hammock that hangs from the trees.
The Mexican Hammock,
The grass-woven Hammock,
The friendly old Hammock
That droops from the trees.

Now crickets are hymning the Night for her guerdon;
The dewdrops have solaced the half-opened rose.
How deeply it bends with a generous burden!
How sweet are the secrets—that nobody knows!
The words that reveal them, the tokens that seal them,
The whispers more soft than the murmur of bees—
The birds shall not learn them, the winds may not steal them
Away from the Hammock that hangs from the trees.
The crafty old Hammock,
The blessèd old Hammock,
The match-making Hammock
That droops from the trees.