Climb by By Winifred Welles

 

 

 

 This poem is one of my favorites. I discovered it through the book “Knee Deep in Thunder” by Sheila Moon, a YA fantasy novel first published in 1967.

Climb

By Winifred Welles

My shoes fall on the house-top that is so far beneath me.
I have hung my hat forever on the sharp church spire,
Now what shall seem the hill but a moment of surmounting,
The height but a place to dream of something higher!

Wings? Oh not for me, I need no other pinions
Than the beating of my heart within my breast;
Wings are for the dreamer with a bird-like longing,
Whose dreams come home at eventide to nest.

The timid folk beseech me, the wise ones warn me,
They say that I shall never grow to stand so high;
But I climb among the hills of cloud and follow vanished lightning,
I shall stand knee-deep in thunder with my head against the sky.

Tiptoe, at last, upon a pinnacle of sunset,
I shall greet the death-like evening with laughter from afar,
Nor tremble in the darkness nor shun the windy midnight,
For by evening I shall be a star.