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James Russell Lowell - The Foot-Path
Work rating: Low

It mounts athwart the windy hill
  Through sallow slopes of upland bare,
And Fancy climbs with foot-fall still
  Its narrowing curves that end in air.

By day, a warmer-hearted blue
  Stoops softly to that topmost swell;
Its thread-like windings seem a clue
  To gracious climes where all is well.

By night, far yonder, I surmise
  An ampler world than clips my ken,
Where the great stars of happier skies
  Commingle nobler fates of men.

I look and long, then haste me home,
  Still master of my secret rare;
Once tried, the path would end in Rome,
  But now it leads me everywhere.

Forever to the new it guides,
  From former good, old overmuch;
What Nature for her poets hides,
  `Tis wiser to divine than clutch.

The bird I list hath never come
  Within the scope of mortal ear;
My prying step would make him dumb,
  And the fair tree, his shelter, sear.

Behind the hill, behind the sky,
  Behind my inmost thought, he sings;
No feet avail; to hear it nigh,
  The song itself must lend the wings.

Sing on, sweet bird close hid, and raise
  Those angel stairways in my brain,
That climb from these low-vaulted days
  To spacious sunshines far from pain.

Sing when thou wilt, enchantment fleet,
  I leave thy covert haunt untrod,
And envy Science not her feat
  To make a twice-told tale of God.

They said the fairies tript no more,
  And long ago that Pan was dead;
`Twas but that fools preferred to bore
  Earth`s rind inch-deep for truth instead.

Pan leaps and pipes all summer long,
  The fairies dance each full-mooned night,
Would we but doff our lenses strong,
  And trust our wiser eyes` delight.

City of Elf-land, just without
  Our seeing, marvel ever new,
Glimpsed in fair weather, a sweet doubt
  Sketched-in, mirage-like, on the blue,

I build thee in yon sunset cloud,
  Whose edge allures to climb the height;
I hear thy drowned bells, inly-loud,
  From still pools dusk with dreams of night.

Thy gates are shut to hardiest will,
  Thy countersign of long-lost speech,--
Those fountained courts, those chambers still,
  Fronting Time`s far East, who shall reach?

I know not, and will never pry,
  But trust our human heart for all;
Wonders that from the seeker fly
  Into an open sense may fall.

Hide in thine own soul, and surprise
  The password of the unwary elves;
Seek it, thou canst not bribe their spies;
  Unsought, they whisper it themselves.
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