  O you who walked the ways with me On hill and plain and hollow: I ask your pardon, frank and free, For all the things that follow. Let me at least make one thing clear; In these—I know no name for them— These dreary talks on futile themes, Dim visions from a dullards dreams, At least you take no blame for them. You cheered my heart, made short the road, And kept me philanthropic; I only write this little ode Which desecrates the topic. You trode with me the mountain ridge And clove the cloud wreaths over it; I take the web of memories We wove beneath the summer skies And lo! the ink-spots cover it. How vain my effort, how absurd, Considered as a symbol! How lame and dull the written word To you the swift and nimble! How alien to the walkers mind, Earth-deep, heaven-high, unfillable, These petty snarls and jests ill-laid And all the profitless parade Of pompous polysyllable! But yet, I feel, though weak my phrase, My rhetoric though rotten, At least our tale of Walks and Days Should not go unforgotten; At least some printed word should mark The walker and his wanderings, The strides which lay the miles behind And lap the contemplative mind In calm, unfathomed ponderings. And one rebuke I need not fear From those of our profession, That Walking Essays should appear To be one long digression. Let others take the hard high-road And earn its gift, callosity: For us the path that twists at will Through wood and field, and up the hill In easy tortuosity. Therefore, companions of the boot, Joint-heirs of wind and weather, In kindness take this little fruit Of all our walks together. For aught it has of wit or truth I reckon you my creditors; Its dulness, errors, want of taste, Inconsequence, may all be placed To my account, the editor’s. And haply you skim the work In skilled eclectic hurry, Some word may find the place where lurk Your memories of Surrey; Or, as you read and doze and droop Well on the way to slumberland, Before you some dim shapes will float, Austere, magnificent, remote, Their Majesties of Cumberland. Dream but awhile: and clouds will lift To show the peaks at muster, The driving shadows shape and shift Before the hill-wind’s bluster: Below far down the earth lies spread With all its care and fretfulness, But here the crumpled soul unfolds, And every rock-strewn gully holds The waters of Forgetfulness. So dream; and through your dreams shall roll The rhythm of limbs free-striding, Which moulds your being to a whole And heals the worlds dividing; So dream, and you shall be a man Free on the open road again; So dream the long night through, and wake With better heart to rise and take The burden of your load again. |
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