SARATOGA AND THE PSALMIST.
Joaquin Miller
hese famous waters smell like—well, - Those Saratoga waters may
- Taste just a little of the day
- Of judgment; and the sulphur smell
- Suggests, along with other things,
- A climate rather warm for springs.
- But restful as a twilight song,
- The land where every lover hath
- A spring, and every spring a path
- To lead love pleasantly along.
- Oh, there be waters, not of springs
- The waters wise King David sings.
- Sweet is the bread that lovers eat
- In secret, sang on harp of gold,
- Jerusalem's high king of old.
- "The stolen waters they are sweet!"
- Oh, dear, delicious piracies
- Of kisses upon love's high seas!
- The old traditions of our race
- Repeat for aye and still repeat;
- The stolen waters still are sweet
- As when King David sat in place,
- All purple robed and crowned in gold,
- And sang his holy psalms of old.
- Oh, to escape the searching sun;
- To seek these waters over sweet;
- To see her dip her dimpled feet
- Where these delicious waters run
- To dip her feet, nor slip nor fall,
- Nor stain her garment's hem at all:
- Nor soil the whiteness of her feet,
- Nor stain her whitest garment's hem
- Oh, singer of Jerusalem,
- You sang so sweet, so wisely sweet!
- Shake hands! shake hands! I guess you knew
- For all your psalms, a thing or two.