WHEN I would get me to the upper fields, I look if anywhere A man be found who craves what joyaunce yields The keen thin air, Who loves the rapture of the height, And fain would snatch with me a perilous delight. I wait, and linger on the village street, And long for one to come, And say: -- "The morning's bright, it is not meet That thou the hum Of vulgar life shouldst leave, and seek the view Alone from those great peaks; I surely will go too." But not to me comes ever any man; Or, if he come, dull sleep Still thickens in his eyes, so that to scan The beckoning steep He has no power; and of its scornful cone Unconscious sits him down, and I go on alone. Yet children are before me on the slope, Their dew-bedabbled prints Press the black fern-roots naked; sunny hope Darts red, and glints Upon their hair; but, devious, they remain Among the bilberry beds, and I go on again. And so there is no help for it, no mate To share the arduous way: Natheless I must ascend ere it grow late, And, dim and gray, The final cloud obstruct my soul's endeavour, And I see nothing more for ever and for ever. |