The Unseen Path's Song

Beneath the boughs where the nature play,

The shadow treads a heedless way—

No pack to call, nor chain to bear,

But stars to chart, and winds to share.

He drinks the dusk, he greets the dawn,

Where weaker hearts are swiftly drawn

To hearths that warm, yet bind and blind,

His path is wrought of sterner kind.

The cliffs may scorn, the storms may weep,

Their wrath but steels the watch he keeps;

For silence, vast and unafraid,

Is mentor to the self-made shade.

Let fools proclaim the crowd’s delight,

And flock to torches forged of night—

His lantern, lit by inner flame,

Burns truer, though it bear no name.

The world may prize the bustling throng,

The chorused laugh, the shouted song—

Yet wisdom’s fruit, both sharp and sweet,

Grows ripe where root and rock compete.

So let him roam, unbound, unspent,

A kingdom forged in the dedication of men;

For solitude, though keen the knife,

Is both the wound and salvation of life.