STANZAS
Often rebuked, yet always back
returning
To those first feelings
that were born with me,
And leaving busy chase of
wealth and learning
For idle dreams of things
which cannot be:
To-day, I will seek not the
shadowy region;
Its unsustaining vastness
waxes drear;
And visions rising, legion
after legion,
Bring the unreal world too
strangely near.
I'll walk, but not in old
heroic traces,
And not in paths of high
morality,And not among the half-distinguished faces,
The clouded forms of long-past
history.
I'll walk where my own nature
would be leading:
It vexes me to choose another
guide:
Where the grey flocks in
ferny glens are feeding;
Where the wild wind blows
on the mountain side.
What have those lonely mountains
worth revealing?
More glory and more grief
than I can tell:
The earth that wakes one
human heart to feeling
Can centre both the worlds
of Heaven and Hell. |
