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