The Pocket | Page 5

for
self-complacency, I repeat, when the event shows a man to have chosen
the better part, and laid out his life more wisely, in the long-run, than
those who have credit for most wisdom. And yet even this is not a good
unmixed; and like all other possessions, although in a less degree, the
possession of a brain that has been thus improved and cultivated, and
made into the prime organ of a man's enjoyment, brings with it certain
inevitable cares and disappointments. The happiness of such an one
comes to depend greatly upon those fine shades of sensation that
heighten and harmonise the coarser elements of beauty. And thus a
degree of nervous prostration, that to other men would be hardly
disagreeable, is enough to overthrow for him the whole fabric of his life,
to take, except at rare moments, the edge off his pleasures, and to meet
him wherever he goes with failure, and the sense of want, and
disenchantment of the world and life.
*
THE VAGABOND
(TO AN AIR OF SCHUBERT)
Give to me the life I love, Let the lave go by me, Give the jolly heaven
above And the byway nigh me.
Bed in the bush with stars to see, Bread I dip in the river-- There's the
life for a man like me, There's the life for ever.
Let the blow fall soon or late, Let what will be o'er me; Give the face of

earth around, And the road before me.
Wealth I ask not, hope nor love, Nor a friend to know me; All I ask, the
heaven above And the road below me.
*
Every one who has been upon a walking or a boating tour, living in the
open air, with the body in constant exercise and the mind in fallow,
knows true ease and quiet. The irritating action of the brain is set at rest;
we think in a plain, unfeverish temper; little things seem big enough,
and great things no longer portentous; and the world is smilingly
accepted as it is.
*
For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's
sake. The great affair is to move; to feel the needs and hitches of our
life more nearly; to come down off this feather-bed of civilisation, and
find the globe granite under foot and strewn with cutting flints. Alas, as
we get up in life, and are more preoccupied with our affairs, even a
holiday is a thing that must be worked for. To hold a pack upon a
pack-saddle against a gale out of the freezing north is no high industry,
but it is one that serves to occupy and compose the mind. And when the
present is so exacting who can annoy himself about the future?
*
A SONG OF THE ROAD
The gauger walked with willing foot, And aye the gauger played the
flute: And what should Master Gauger play But OVER THE HILLS
AND FAR AWAY?
Whene'er I buckle on my pack And foot it gaily in the track, O pleasant
gauger, long since dead, I hear you fluting on ahead.
You go with me the selfsame way-- The selfsame air for me you play;
For I do think and so do you It is the tune to travel to.
For who would gravely set his face To go to this or t'other place?
There's nothing under Heav'n so blue That's fairly worth the travelling
to.
On every hand the roads begin, And people walk with zeal therein; But
wheresoe'er the highways tend, Be sure there's nothing at the end.
Then follow you, wherever hie The travelling mountains of the sky. Or
let the streams in civil mode Direct your choice upon a road;
For one and all, or high or low, Will lead you where you wish to go;

And one and all go night and day OVER THE HILLS AND FAR
AWAY!
*
A walking tour should be gone upon alone, because freedom is of the
essence; because you should be able to stop and go on, and follow this
way or that, as the freak takes you; and because you must have your
own pace, and neither trot alongside a champion walker, nor mince in
time with a girl. And then you must be open to all impressions and let
your thoughts take colour from what you see. You should be as a pipe
for any wind to play upon.
*
It must not be imagined that a walking tour, as some would have us
fancy, is merely a better or worse way of seeing the country. There are
many ways of seeing landscape quite as good; and none more vivid, in
spite of canting dilettantes, than from a railway train. But landscape on