To eat the dust and drink the roaring wind?

And all for what? A handful of bright sand

To buy a shroud with and a length of earth?

Oh, saner are the hearts on stiller ways!

Thrice happier they who, far from these wild hours,

Grow softly as the apples on a bough.

Wiser the plowman with his scudding blade,

Turning a straight fresh furrow down a field—

Wiser the herdsman whistling to his heart,

In the long shadows at the break of day—