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

Today 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 then I can tell

The earth that wakes one human heart to feeling

Can centre both the worlds of Heaven and Hell