Classic Poem

O rare delight of seeing,
O joy unchecked of being
Abroad and free, in this wide world of ours!
Such pleasure the birds have,
Winging o'er wood and wave,
O'er meadows bright with dew, bright with perpetual flowers.

Still fares the wanderer forth,
And still the exhaustless Earth
With all her treasures greets her wayward child;
For him, on all her shores,
She spreads her countless stores,
In sunlit beauty strewn, or solemn grandeur piled.

The plain at early light;
At noon, the mountain height;
At eve, the valley, with its shadows deep;
At night, the cataract,
Or ocean's boundless tract,
With ceaseless rush of waves, or murmurs soft as sleep.

To-day, the crowded mart,
The sacred shrines of Art,
The domes of empire, the cathedral vast;
To-morrow, the wild woods,
Or desert solitudes,
With shattered temples strewn and fragments of the Past.

Tempt not my feet to stay;
Along the upward way,
Across the earth, across the sparkling sea,
Beyond the distant isles,
The far horizon smiles,
And where its voices call, thither my steps must be!