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The dim sea
glints chill. The white sun is shy,
And the skeleton
weeds and the never-dry,
Rough, long grasses keep
white with frost
At the hill-top by the finger-post;
The smoke of the traveller's-joy is puffed
Over
hawthorn berry and hazel tuft.
I read the sign. Which
way shall I go?
A voice says: "You would not have
doubted so
At twenty." Another voice gentle with
scorn
Says: "At twenty you wished you had never been
born."
One hazel lost a leaf of gold
From a tuft
at the tip, when the first voice told
The other he
wished to know what 'twould be
To be sixty by this
same post. "You shall see,"
He laughed -and I had to
join his laughter -
"You shall see; but either
before or after,
Whatever happens, it must befall.
A mouthful of earth to remedy all
Regrets and wishes
shall be freely given;
And if there be a flaw in that
heaven
'Twill be freedom to wish, and your wish may
be
To be here or anywhere talking to me,
No matter
what the weather, on earth,
At any age between death
and birth, -
To see what day or night can be,
The
sun and the frost, tha land and the sea,
Summer,
Winter, Autumn, Spring, -
With a poor man of any
sort, down to a king,
Standing upright out in the air
Wondering where he shall journey, O where?"
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