The Higher Kinship

Life is too grim with anxious, eating care
  To cherish what is best. Our souls are scarred
  By daily agonies, and our conscience marred
  By petty tyrannies that waste and wear.
  Why is this human fate so hard to bear?
  Could we but live with hill-lakes silver-starred,
  Or where the eternal silence leaneth toward
  The awful front of nature, waste and bare:
  Then might we, brothers to the lofty thought
 And inward self-communion of her dream,
 Into that closer kin with love be brought,
 Where mighty hills and woods and waters, wan,
 Moon-paved at midnight or godlike at dawn,
 Hold all earth's aspirations in their gleam.