Classic Poem

Scenery Hunting

Light multitudes! O spare the weary seas,
That like tired subjects bear you year by year.
Europe stands wondering on her spacious quays,
With face half-doubting whether smile or tear
Would fittest greet the Englishman's disease.
Strange people! flung like spray from summer tides
In leafy places and o'er green hill-sides!
Substance fades off to form; each glorious thing,
Wherein ancestral wisdom was enshrined,
Whereto imaginative power might cling
With Christian hold, is shed upon the wind.
Man, made of earth, from earth will strive to bring
O'er his dull lifetime the receding light
Of the Eternal and the Infinite.English