Classic Poem

Not on the Heights to remain, toil we to the crests of the mountains,
We who are restless, who strive, who find not our joys in the vale:
Only an hour on the peak after the day in the lowland;
Then to our separate doors, together we make the descent.

Visionless there to abide! Deaf to the hearts in our fellows,
We in the cities may labour each at his spindle or loom;
But when, on the road winding up, our feet find the path steep and narrow,
Question, and doubt of the effort, desire of the hills, make us one.

The summit attained, but look down! How noble in manifold colour,
How ordered, proportioned, complete, we behold the deep valley to be:
Street after street of the town, meadows and fields up the hillsides,
Plain to the vision unfold, maplike, the puzzle of life!

There for an hour in the dusk, drawn into fellowship golden,
With food, speech, and song we refresh the spirit and body anew;
Till, in the homes far below, the night-lamps glimmer and beckon,
And to our separate doors, together we make the descent.

Here in the town once again the round of our divers ambitions
Resuming, each mind closing in on its own, go we our own ways;
Yet, deep and abiding and calm, is there not in each soul the surrender
To what from the hilltop he saw, to what on the crest he conceived? —

Unity, purpose, and plan out of a life which our nearness
Makes us to doubt; brother-souls the city forbids us to learn;
Faith in the glory of living; the ultimate pure aspiration;
Virtue which, innate and quenchless, glows in mankind — all of these!

Time and the tangible flee. Memory hath her still music,
Vibrating deathlessly on in the great longing heart of mankind:
So, if to breathe but one strain of the harmonies heard on the hilltops
Hint to his fellows of these, the Singer, content, will pass on!