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. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE WILD GAZELLE by GEORGE GORDON BYRON THE LEAK IN THE DIKE; A STORY OF HOLLAND by PHOEBE CARY WEARINESS by HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW AGAINST QUARRELLING AND FIGHTING by ISAAC WATTS THE COMPLAINT by JOSEPH BEAUMONT POET FLAYS TEMPTATIONS OF CITY LIFE by MORRIS GILBERT BISHOP |