I wandered up a mountain pass
     to leave the world behind.
  I have no children, nor a wife,
  nor anything to call a life.
This sojourn through the world, alas,
     is all I know as mine.
I was a denizen - the last -
     and here I am, one still,
yet wand'ring through the wooded path,
     and o'er the rolling hill.

My heart went to the mountains bare,
     into the wooded night,
  where darkness fell as thick as clay
  and murdered memory of day,
to see if dawn could conquer there
     and set the woods alight.
Though, when she came at last to see
     the darkness falling thick,  
She reached out to the tallest tree
     and lit it like a wick.
The embers danced from leaf to leaf
and spread the flame from high to low.
The mountains turned a burning wreath
of blinding light from morning glow.
The forest smoked and fell to ash -
my heart fell with it, smitten dust,
and blanketed the earth at last,
my birth; now death the only must.

The rains fall on that mountain high
     and soak the ashen earth
  then wash into a small ravine
  that widens to a narrow stream -
my heart and blood flow with it, nigh
     upon a gliding mirth.
Then suddenly, it turns to wrath
     becomes a river wide;
the torrent cuts a canyon path
     into the mountainside
and digs into the world deep
     and chisels through her bones
and courses through her weathered vanes
     and echoes in her groans.
The river and my blood flow through
     the underground below,
  in silent limestone caves, alight
  with glow-worms in their cavern-night,
emerging at the ocean blue
    to join the ebb and flow.

My soul went to the mountains clean,
     unfettered by the mind.
  A wind - turned from the gilded plain
  now drinking deep the ocean rain -
whistling through the valley green,
     delivers me from time.
The Mountains rise and crash like waves,
     in laughter at the Tides:
  a frenzied chase around the world
  the moon, that pale translucent pearl,
with crests that reach for heaven, crave,
     eternally deprived.
Why hurry on, sweet crashing Sea,
     Why rush? The Mountains ask.
   Dear Mountain, you have much to learn
   of seas and oceans, how they turn.
'Tis not a frenzied chore for me,
     but an unhurried task.
But you, the Ocean says, I see
are more laborious than me,
though you see such splendid heights
it takes ten thousand days and nights
to raise a peak, to break a crest
against the wind and fall to rest.
Indeed it does, the Mountain sighs,
and goes about it's steady rise.

I went into the mountains lost
     and found myself at last
  in sun-bright forest, mountain stream,
  on rolling hill, by ocean green.
I went into the mountains
     and I lost myself at last.