Summary: A popular poem.<br> “Vagabond House”<br> Don Blanding<br> edited by The Voice before the Void<br> When I have a house . . . as I sometime may . . .<br> I’ll suit my fancy in every way.<br> I’ll fill it with things that have caught my eye<br> In drifting from Iceland to Molokai.<br> It won’t be correct or in period style,<br> But . . . oh, I’ve thought for a long, long while<br> Of all the corners and all the nooks,<br> Of all the bookshelves and all the books,<br> The great big table, the deep, soft chairs,<br> And the Chinese rug at the foot of the stairs;<br> It’s an old, old rug from far Chow Wan<br> That a Chinese princess once walked on.<br> My house will stand on the side of a hill<br> By a slow, broad river, deep and still,<br> With a tall lone pine on guard near by<br> Where the birds can sing and the stormwinds cry.<br> A flagstone walk, with lazy curves,<br> Will lead to the door where a Pan’s head serves<br> As a knocker there, like a vibrant drum,<br> To let me know that a friend has come;<br> And the door will squeak as I swing it wide<br> To welcome you to the cheer inside.<br> For I’ll have good friends who can sit and chat<br> Or simply sit, when it comes to that,<br> By the fireplace where the fir logs blaze<br> And the smoke rolls up in a weaving haze.<br> I’ll want a woodbox, scarred and rough,<br> For leaves and bark and odorous stuff<br> Like resinous knots and cones and gums,<br> To chuck on the flames when winter comes;<br> And I hope a cricket will stay around,<br> For I love its creaky, lonesome sound.<br> A long low shelf of teak will hold<br> My best-loved books in leather and gold,<br> While magazines lie on a bowlegged stand<br> In a polyglot mixture close at hand.<br> I’ll have on a table a rich brocade<br> That I think the pixies must have made,<br> For the dull gold thread on blues and grays<br> Weaves a pattern of Puck–the Magic Maze.<br> On the mantlepiece I’ll have a place<br> For a little mud god with a painted face<br> That was given to me . . . oh, long ago,<br> By a Philippine maid in Olongapo.<br> Then–just in range of a lazy reach–<br> A bulging bowl of Indian beech<br> Will brim with things that are good to munch–<br> Hickory nuts to crack and crunch,<br> Big fat raisins and sun-dried dates<br> And curious fruits from the Malay Straits,<br> Maple sugar and cookies brown,<br> With good hard cider to wash them down,<br> Wine-sap apples, pick of the crop,<br> And ears of corn to shell and pop<br> With plenty of butter and lots of salt–<br> If you don’t get filled it’s not my fault.<br> Pictures . . . I think I’ll have but three:<br> One, in oil, of a wind-swept sea<br> With the flying scud and the waves whipped white–<br> (I know the chap who can paint it right)<br> In lapis blue and deep jade green–<br> A great big smashing fine marine<br> That’ll make you feel the spray in your face–<br> I’ll hang it over my fireplace.<br> The second picture–a freakish thing–<br> Is gaudy and bright as a macaw’s wing–<br> An impressionist smear called “Sin,”<br> A nude on a striped zebra skin<br> By a Danish girl I knew in France.<br> My respectable friends will look askance<br> At the purple eyes and the scarlet hair,<br> At the pallid face and the evil stare<br> Of the sinister, beautiful vampire face.<br> I shouldn’t have it about the place,<br> But I like–while I loathe–the beastly thing,<br> And that’s the way that one feels about sin.<br> The picture I love the best of all<br> Will hang alone on my study wall<br> Where the sunset’s glow and the moon’s cold gleam<br> Will fall on the face, and make it seem<br>
