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Themes and Variations
How high was the sky in those days! The wide plain at our feet
Stretched out like the sea, and the long, long horizon unbound,
Seemed to faint in mirage, like the smoke of a surf-beaten shore.
From my window high up in the roof I could look out for leagues
O’er the great plains unploughed, white and sere in the midsummer heats,
Not dipped in green leaves, like your England in ripening June.
. . . . There was only one track; it went wandering round and about
Till it climbed on a ridge of the hills, and went over the spur.
To my fancy it seemed like the road that the pilgrims of old,
Good Christian, and Hopeful, climbed on to the heavenly land.
Haw often I looked, half in hope, that the Three Shining Ones
Would walk there in light; but they never came over the hills. . . . .
Some days I would see on the road the slow yoke-laden steers
Dragging patiently on in the dust-cloud their burden of wool
From the far-inland desert; and sometimes at dusk on the pass
Their camp-fires shone friendly, like lighthouses over the plain.
Stretched out like the sea, and the long, long horizon unbound,
Seemed to faint in mirage, like the smoke of a surf-beaten shore.
From my window high up in the roof I could look out for leagues
O’er the great plains unploughed, white and sere in the midsummer heats,
Not dipped in green leaves, like your England in ripening June.
. . . . There was only one track; it went wandering round and about
Till it climbed on a ridge of the hills, and went over the spur.
To my fancy it seemed like the road that the pilgrims of old,
Good Christian, and Hopeful, climbed on to the heavenly land.
Haw often I looked, half in hope, that the Three Shining Ones
Would walk there in light; but they never came over the hills. . . . .
Some days I would see on the road the slow yoke-laden steers
Dragging patiently on in the dust-cloud their burden of wool
From the far-inland desert; and sometimes at dusk on the pass
Their camp-fires shone friendly, like lighthouses over the plain.