Who is there among us who has found the key
Of the treasure that is locked in the hearts of men?
Only the poet lonely in his chamber
Or the man remembering his childhood again.
Hearing gay voices, my heart is hollow,
An empty room with bright colours on the walls;
The speech of my brother is no more than a traffic
That remote and coldly on my dull brain falls.
I am deaf to the song in the speech of my fellows,
I have outwitted my childhood's desires;
And where have I travelled that to the far horizon
Dead in the landscape are earth's bright fires?
Didst thou ever murder, Macbeth, thy sorrow,
Didst thou ever murder thy soul's young joy,
Thou hadst never flinched from the life of another,
Thou hadst but with laughter stol'n from him a toy!
Would that a Spirit had stolen from me
The glittering baubles of my cunning mind,
And left me the sweet forest of my wondering childhood,
Its transparent water in tall trees enshrined.
Then was I happy. Love was my companion;
I was in communion with star and stream;
With bird and with flower I was linked in rapture,
We stared at each other—the valley's dream.
Out of the mountains we were carven,
Birds and flowers, stream, rock and child—
O but I belong there! I am torn from my body,
In that far-away forest it lies exiled!
There falls the water transparently shining,
Hangs there a flower that blooms in my eyes.
Long have I been ready! let me go thither,
And unloosen my limbs to those dream-coloured skies.
O that it were possible! but that land has vanished;
The magic of that valley has crumbled away;
Bright crowds are there only, the mind's cold idola;
And my footprints on the dead ground startle the day.
W. J. TURNER