1 Life is too grim with anxious, eating care 
2 To cherish what is best. Our souls are scarred
3 By daily agonies, and our conscience marred
4 By petty tyrannies that waste and wear. 
5 Why is this human fate so hard to bear? 
6 Could we but live with hill-lakes silver-starred, 
7 Or where the eternal silence leaneth toward
8 The awful front of nature, waste and bare:

9 Then might we, brothers to the lofty thought
10 And inward self-communion of her dream, 
11 Into that closer kin with love be brought, 
12 Where mighty hills and woods and waters, wan, 
13 Moon-paved at midnight or godlike at dawn, 
14 Hold all earth's aspirations in their gleam.