A wave that rises with a breath
Above the infinite watery plain,
To foam and sparkle in the sun
A moment ere it sink again.
The eternal undulation runs:
A man, I die: perchance to be,
Next life, a white-throat on the wind,
A daffodil on Tempe's lea.
They lied who said that Pan was dead:
Life was, life is, and life shall be.
So take away your crucifix—
The everliving gods for me!
THE UPLAND
We often go a-driving across the pleasant land,
In summer through the pine woods dark, or by the ocean strand;
But when the orchards blossom, and when the apples fall,
We seek the high hill country that props the mountain wall.
Old farms with mossed stone fences, old grassy roads that wind
Forever on and upward to higher fields behind,
By ancient bush-grown pastures, bestrewn with boulders gray,
And lonely meadow slopes that bear thin crops of upland hay.
As, terrace over terrace, we climb the mountain stair,
More solitary grow the ways, more wild the farms and rare,
And slenderer in their rocky beds the singing brooks that go
Down-slipping to the valley stream a thousand feet below.
Above us and above us still the grim escarpments rise,
Till homeward we must turn at last, or ere the daylight dies,
And leave unscaled the summit height, the even ridge o'erhead,
Where smolder through the cedar screen the sunset embers red.
What should we see, if once we won on that top step to stand?
A wondrous valley world beyond? A far-stretched tableland?
Almost it seems as though there lay the threshold of the sky,
And that the foot which crossed that sill would enter Heaven thereby.