Poem by Bliss Carman

The Path to Sankoty

It winds along the headlands
Above the open sea—
The lonely moorland footpath
That leads to Sankoty.

The crooning sea spreads sailless
And gray to the world's rim,
Where hang the reeking fog-banks
Primordial and dim.

There fret the ceaseless currents,
And the eternal tide
Chafes over hidden shallows
Where the white horses ride.

The wistful fragrant moorlands
Whose smile bids panic cease,
Lie treeless and cloud-shadowed
In grave and lonely peace.

Across their flowering bosom,
From the far end of day
Blow clean the great soft moor-winds
All sweet with rose and bay.

A world as large and simple
As first emerged for man,
Cleared for the human drama,
Before the play began.

O well the soul must treasure
The calm that sets it free—
The vast and tender skyline,
The sea-turn's wizardry,

Solace of swaying grasses,
The friendship of sweet-fern—
And in the world's confusion
Remembering, must yearn

To tread the moorland footpath
That leads to Sankoty,
Hearing the field-larks shrilling
Beside the sailless sea.

1. The Tree of Heaven
2. Peony
3. The Urban Pan
4. White Iris
5. Fireflies

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