Swords and Plowshares/My Journey
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To John Burroughs, from whom I obtained the idea
WHY should I travel, whom the journeying year
Conveys, a passenger, from clime to clime?
Now in the glades of tropic summer-time,
Where scarlet songsters pipe their note of cheer;
Then through the harvest-land, where ear on ear
Of Indian corn swells in its vigorous prime,
And maples blush at kissing of the rime,
While hazy distances grow keen and clear;
And then still northward to the snowy waste
Of dead December's realm where Cold is king,
Whence turning to the South I needs must haste
Toward the warm waking region of the Spring.
And all these lands I love, and, loving, fain
Would rest for long in each, but all in vain!
Conveys, a passenger, from clime to clime?
Now in the glades of tropic summer-time,
Where scarlet songsters pipe their note of cheer;
Then through the harvest-land, where ear on ear
Of Indian corn swells in its vigorous prime,
And maples blush at kissing of the rime,
While hazy distances grow keen and clear;
And then still northward to the snowy waste
Of dead December's realm where Cold is king,
Whence turning to the South I needs must haste
Toward the warm waking region of the Spring.
And all these lands I love, and, loving, fain
Would rest for long in each, but all in vain!