Things I’ve Learned While Roaming the Earth

1

All quiet, dear city, afar off below;

All starry, a stranger to mourning and woe.

At nighttime your beauty is borne on the view,

To a hill where the solemn have fashioned a pew;

Who long for the substance of things now forgot,

Striving for wonders the world never sought.

At daybreak, the morning sweeps over the hills;

The sleepers arise to their differing wills;

And fill up the valley with voices below,

Of deafening folly and his whispering foe;

But heed not the rustles that linger beyond,

Reminding each soul of its common bond.

At night, to the hillside the frolicking breeze

Unfolds from the darkness of deepening seas;

And dances aloft from the slumbering gleam

Swirling the cold of terrestrial beams.

Unmindful of mortals who slumber below,

Then parting in darkness to whisper and blow.

I’ll wait for her here in the far between

Where shadow and longing have gathered unseen,

And watch as the laboring world passes by,

With fate ever casting his unhappy die.

But speak to her, city, of the twinkling view

Where oft I have wandered to gaze over you;

Speak of the softness of breezes that play

Upon the green hillsides, so far and away.

Whisper of all of the wonders I see,

And send her, dear city, to be here with me.