| |
| THE crooked paths go every way | |
| Upon the hill—they wind about | |
| Through the heather in and out | |
| Of the quiet sunniness. | |
| And there the goats, day after day, | 5 |
| Stray in sunny quietness, | |
| Cropping here and cropping there, | |
| As they pause and turn and pass, | |
| Now a bit of heather spray, | |
| Now a mouthful of the grass. | 10 |
| |
| In the deeper sunniness, | |
| In the place where nothing stirs, | |
| Quietly in quietness, | |
| In the quiet of the furze, | |
| For a time they come and lie | 15 |
| Staring on the roving sky. | |
| |
| If you approach they run away, | |
| They leap and stare, away they bound, | |
| With a sudden angry sound, | |
| To the sunny quietude; | 20 |
| Crouching down where nothing stirs | |
| In the silence of the furze, | |
| Crouching down again to brood | |
| In the sunny solitude. | |
| |
| If I were as wise as they, | 25 |
| I would stray apart and brood, | |
| I would beat a hidden way | |
| Through the quiet heather spray | |
| To a sunny solitude; | |
| |
| And should you come I’d run away, | 30 |
| I would make an angry sound, | |
| I would stare and turn and bound | |
| To the deeper quietude, | |
| To the place where nothing stirs | |
| In the silence of the furze. | 35 |
| |
| In that airy quietness | |
| I would think as long as they; | |
| Through the quiet sunniness | |
| I would stray away to brood | |
| By a hidden, beaten way | 40 |
| In the sunny solitude, | |
| |
| I would think until I found | |
| Something I can never find, | |
| Something lying on the ground, | |
| In the bottom of my mind. | 45 |
| |
