The Sign-Post + 

The dim sea glints chill. The white sun is shy. + 

And the skeleton weeds and the never-dry, + 

Rough, long grasses keep white with frost + 

At the hilltop by the finger-post; + 

The smoke of the traveller’s-joy is puffed + 

Over hawthorn berry and hazel tuft. + 

I read the sign. Which way shall I go? + 

A voice says: You would not have doubted so + 

At twenty. Another voice gentle with scorn + 

Says: At twenty you wished you had never been born. + 

One hazel lost a leaf of gold + 

From a tuft at the tip, when the first voice told + 

The other he wished to know what ’twould be + 

To be sixty by this same post. “You shall see,” + 

He laughed⁠—and I had to join his laughter⁠— + 

“You shall see; but either before or after, + 

Whatever happens, it must befall, + 

A mouthful of earth to remedy all + 

Regrets and wishes shall freely be given; + 

And if there be a flaw in that heaven + 

’Twill be freedom to wish, and your wish may be + 

To be here or anywhere talking to me, + 

No matter what the weather, on earth, + 

At any age between death and birth⁠— + 

To see what day or night can be, + 

The sun and the frost, the land and the sea, + 

Summer, Autumn, Winter, Spring⁠— + 

With a poor man of any sort, down to a king, + 

Standing upright out in the air + 

Wondering where he shall journey, O where?” + 