The Sign-Post

The dim sea glints chill.

The white sun is shy,

And the skeleton weeds and the never-dry,

Rough, long grasses keep white with

At the hill-top by the finger-post;

The smoke of the traveller's-joy is

Over hawthorn berry and hazel tuft.

I read the sign.

Which way shall I go?

A voice says: "You would not have doubted

At twenty." Another voice gentle with

Says: "At twenty you wished you had never been born."One hazel lost a leaf of

From a tuft at the tip, when the first voice

The other he wished to know what 'twould

To be sixty by this same post. "You shall see,"He laughed -and I had to join his laughter - "You shall see; but either before or after,

Whatever happens, it must befall.

A mouthful of earth to remedy

Regrets and wishes shall be freely given;

And if there be a flaw in that heaven'Twill be freedom to wish, and your wish may

To be here or anywhere talking to me,

No matter what the weather, on earth,

At any age between death and birth, - To see what day or night can be,

The sun and the frost, tha land and the sea,

Summer,

Winter,

Autumn,

Spring, - With a poor man of any sort, down to a king,

Standing upright out in the

Wondering where he shall journey,

O where?"