Often rebuked, yet always back returning

To those first feelings that were born with me,

And leaving busy chase of wealth and learning

4

For idle dreams of things which cannot be:

Today, I will not seek the shadowy region;

Its unsustaining vastness waxes drear;

And visions rising, legion after legion,

8

Bring the unreal world too strangely near.

I’ll walk, but not in old heroic traces,

And not in paths of high morality,

And not among the half-distinguished faces,

12

The clouded forms of long-past history.

I’ll walk where my own nature would be leading:

It vexes me to choose another guide:

Where the grey flocks in ferny glens are feeding;

16

Where the wild wind blows on the mountain-side.

What have those lonely mountains worth revealing?

More glory, and more grief, than I can tell:

The earth that wakes one human heart to feeling

20

Can centre both the worlds of Heaven and Hell.