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                            WALKING ESSAYS




                            WALKING ESSAYS

                                  BY

                            A. H. SIDGWICK

                                LONDON
                             EDWARD ARNOLD
                                 1912

                         _All rights reserved_




            _DEDICATION_

            _COMITIBUS_


    _O you who walked the ways with me
      On hill and plain and hollow:
    I ask your pardon, frank and free,
      For all the things that follow.
    Let me at least make one thing clear;
      In these--I know no name for them--
    These dreary talks on futile themes,
    Dim visions from a dullards dreams,
      At least you take no blame for them._

    _You cheered my heart, made short the road,
      And kept me philanthropic;
    I only write this little ode
      Which desecrates the topic.
    You trode with me the mountain ridge
      And clove the cloud wreaths over it;
    I take the web of memories
    We wove beneath the summer skies
      And lo! the ink-spots cover it._

    _How vain my effort, how absurd,
      Considered as a symbol!
    How lame and dull the written word
      To you the swift and nimble!
    How alien to the walkers mind,
      Earth-deep, heaven-high, unfillable,
    These petty snarls and jests ill-laid
    And all the profitless parade
      Of pompous polysyllable!_

    _But yet, I feel, though weak my phrase,
      My rhetoric though