Arthur Quiller-Couch, comp. The Oxford Book of Victorian Verse. 1922.
First PathwaysSidney Royse Lysaght (18601941)
W
In mountain glens? or by the ocean strands?
Or where, beyond the ripening harvest lands,
The distant hills were blue?
Over a mellow city’s walls and towers?
Or where the fields and lanes were bright with flowers,
In quiet woodland ways?
That place you dwelt in first was holy ground;
Its shelter was the kindest you have found,
Its pathways were the best.
I doubt not that a golden light was shed
On those first paths, and that they also led
To lands of heart’s desire.
Heard the caged lark sing of the April hills,
Or where they damm’d the muddy gutter rills,
Or made a dog their friend;
About the organ man, for them, too, lay
Beyond the dismal alley’s entrance way,
The gates of wonderland.
To all her children,—never a rebuff;
And that we only saw, where ways were rough,
The flowers about our feet.