Arthur Quiller-Couch, comp. The Oxford Book of Victorian Verse. 1922.
Stanzas: Often rebuked, yet always back returningEmily Brontë (18181848)
O
To those first feelings that were born with me,
And leaving busy chase of wealth and learning
For idle dreams of things which cannot be:
Its unsustaining vastness waxes drear;
And visions rising, legion after legion,
Bring the unreal world too strangely near.
And not in paths of high morality,
And not among the half-distinguish’d faces,
The clouded forms of long-past history.
It vexes me to choose another guide:
Where the grey flocks in ferny glens are feeding,
Where the wild wind blows on the mountain side.