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The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 13, Issue 10 (January 2, 1939)

Road Harvest

Road Harvest.

The roads that run, criss-cross, around the world,
Bearing unending loads with endless calm,
Bannered with joyous memories unfurled
Whose reminiscence brings to tired souls balm:
These roads can show a harvest which no farm
Or gorgeous garden, snug round its abode,
Can grant to gleaners fenced from all alarm;
Such may not reap the yield of open road.
Bare you must go, small pulse within your scrip.
(But, oh! the glories of the moonlit hills.)
Light purse—light heart! Sweetness of chance-found lip
Shall be your anodyne for worldly ills:
Brightness of vagrant eye your unease stills.
Joy for the sunshine, fortitude for loads,
Patience with well-meant charity that chills:
So shall you garner sheaves along the roads.
When, toward the journey's end you sit and dream,
(See, in the embers how the trails unfold.)
Friends shall step down—by bush or hill or stream,
Trysted from time-worn tracks—they ne'er grow old.
Again with one you feel the Arctic cold,
And, with another, watch the crowd that showed
Black on the flood-lit streets in days of gold ….
Glad gleanings from the harvest of the road.