Roads

BY EDWARD THOMAS

I love roads:

The goddesses that dwell

Far along invisible

Are my favorite gods.




Roads go on

While we forget, and are

Forgotten like a star

That shoots and is gone.




On this earth 'tis sure

We men have not made             

Anything that doth fade

So soon, so long endure:




The hill road wet with rain

In the sun would not gleam

Like a winding stream

If we trod it not again.




They are lonely

While we sleep, lonelier

For lack of the traveller

Who is now a dream only. 

                

From dawn's twilight

And all the clouds like sheep

On the mountains of sleep

They wind into the night.




The next turn may reveal

Heaven: upon the crest

The close pine clump, at rest

Ancl black, may Hell conceal.




Often footsore, never

Yet of the road I weary,                  

Though long and steep and dreary,

As it winds on for ever.




Helen of the roads,

The mountain ways of Wales

And the Mabinogion tales,

Is one of the true gods,




Abiding in the trees,

The threes and fours so wise,

The larger companies,

That by the roadside be,




And beneath the rafter

Else uninhabited

Excepting by the dead;

And it is her laughter




At morn and night I hear

When the thrush cock sings

Bright irrelevant things,

And when the chanticleer




Calls back to their own night

Troops that make loneliness

With their light footsteps’ press,

As Helen’s own are light.




Now all roads lead to France

And heavy is the tread

Of the living; but the dead

Returning lightly dance:




Whatever the road bring

To me or take from me,

They keep me company

With their pattering,




Crowding the solitude

Of the loops over the downs,

Hushing the roar of towns

and their brief multitude.