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.
