Poetry Archive
The Quest.
The text is presented as written. Line breaks are preserved from the archived source.
Gazing o’er the green meads,
Under a clear blue sky;
Listening to the night breeze,
Pacing through the starry night;
Looking into a deep shadowy vale,
From the heights of a mountain peak;
Breathing in the sea’s tangy airs,
With the waves lapping at my feet;
Pushing through a black hurricane,
While lightning sears and thunder roars;
Out in the wild stormy night, when,
The moon hides in the wrack of the clouds;
Deep in the bowels of a crowded city,
Yearning to see the sunset in the west;
Sitting in my chair at the window,
Gazing over the twilit tree tops;
Always have I asked this of Nature,
“Where in this world of haste,
Will I ever find a place to rest?
When will, some respite, I gain,
From the pressures of ‘hopes’ and ‘wishes’?
Where will I find some peace,
From the violence of human emotion?
How can I escape this storm of life,
The storm that man hath verily made?”
Standing under a sky, lightning crowned,
The answer to my questions came,
Came from the voice of the roaring winds.
“Oft have you felt in your heart,
The call of Nature, the call of the Wild,
Resist it not my dear friend,
What Nature does, she does for the best.
Step out of the door my friend,
Let the Road sweep you along,
Take the Hidden Paths into the West,
Save yourself from the Doom of Man,
Just follow the Call of the Wild….”
The winds sped on unendingly,
Whistling through the swaying boughs…
A deep voice, clear and resonant,
Rang through the tumultuous storm;
“The time is near my son; very near,
Soon you will find your hall in the firth.
Just follow the call when it comes,
Then, in peace, you shall live to the end.”
This poem belongs to the poetry archive on Chips’nCode. Where surviving legacy material exists, the original title graphic is kept with the poem as part of the record rather than rebuilt into something newer.
Copyright © Manoj Prajwal Bhattaram. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used with clear attribution, these poems may not be copied, redistributed, adapted, or used to create derivative works without prior written permission.