The Path Past Present

Since it is nearly Halloween and since a friend found me a book of this poet in Edinburgh today, I thought I would add these pictures and say something of them.

When the new picture above was taken, it was September 5th of this year. The day was ending and I had just finished looking quickly at the little town my poet was born in and had made my way to a forest that lead to the ocean. I had thought of visiting this place because I had read long ago about some special birds there. I was not dissapointed! But afterwards, I made my way to the beach, ate my little sandwich, and collected seashells as the sun set. It was perfect and the more time I spent there, the more I had the feeling that my poet had been here. I don't believe in ghosts as active agents but it was a feeling more like I had found someone's secret place. The color picture above is of the pathway towards the beach.

Well, when I arrived home I could not shake my feeling. I thought maybe it was that I had read something of that area in the past? Was there a passage when I had read about the birds? I hunted for the book but instead of finding it, I found the above stereograph (one section of which is shown above). It was the same pathway! So I bought it and when it arrived I saw the date on the back: September 18th, 1887. That would be 123 years and 13 days from the time the photo was taken and the time when I visited. I found it stunning because it was not an obvious place at all: finding it was very difficult and then for it to have survived so long the same little place...well that is just wonderful!

It struck me more and more how special it was to have been there. The poet later lived 3000 miles away from where he was born and since I was from there, it was my 3000 miles too...just in reverse. I brooded over it for a while and still felt there must have been a poem somewhere. It took me nearly 2 months, but at last this week I found it. It was a poem most certainly written in 1914 or 1915 when he returned home because his wife had left him. He had been away for about 24 years and would have been 45-46 years old when he wrote the poem:

The wholesome flowers of autumn blow
And squirrels chatter as in joy,
In woods I rambled when a boy,
Careless, and many years ago.

Old scents and sounds .... I find no change,
Revisiting, a wanderer;
The trees and roads are as they were,
Untouched, and I alone am strange—

Strange even to myself! And they,
The lads who roamed the wood with me,
Are changed from what they used to be,
And some are gone, and all are grey.

And now awhile I watch the bird
That haunts the hollow past the hill,
And dream I hear the echo still
Of voices I have never heard.

I well recall the path and pond—
I who have journeyed since so far,
Nor found by light of sun or star
That Land forevermore beyond.



I feel strongly that the path and the pond he speaks of are where I visited. I could be wrong and the place could have been developed but there was such a feeling there for me that I think it is the spot.

3000 miles, a bird, and sandwich
resulting in the poem and the path: his memories.