  BEYOND all boundaries and pales You led me hillward. With the clouds We two were driven and the gales That filled your soul's delightful sails Shook my faint spirit's shrouds. There where the Æons still emboss Cromlech and cairn and tufa crown With lichen cold and stag-horn moss And callous suns cross and recross, You paused, and I looked down And saw the straight strait Roman road, The entangling lanes, our wayward track And vestiges of all who strode On the old quest with the old load Beckoned me back and back. Sweet wood-smoke climbing up the fell Met me half-way as down I won, And met me too the climbing bell That bids the world kneel to a knell, A knell ascending to the sun. The holy bell shall tune my note, The stars shall touch my thatch at night, Within my spirit's dark stream shall float A planet, meek as a child's boat, That mocked your utmost height. Yet I am yours—your pace is stamped On mine, o'er mine your spirit broods— Who tread the sanctuary hushed and lamped With strides that took the heath and tramped Your hopeless altitudes. |
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