Along a wooded bank there’s a narrow path that runs just above the road. It’s almost invisible to the grown-ups who keep to the road, content with their own view and whatever the children report back. The children, though, use this path as their own private lookout, peering down between beech and yew trunks to where a fallen tree blocks the sight. Moss tries to soften the chalk and roots with olive, gold, and emerald, but the constant tread of small feet wears it back, polishing the path to a silver gleam year after year. The road itself is lonely — no houses, not even a school route — so a child sighting there is rare. To an adult eye, the path seems to promise some legendary or longed-for destination. But it doesn’t: it simply stops when the wood stops. The feeling is quiet and wistful, a glimpse of a secret childhood world that exists only as long as the wood lasts, and only for those who run along it.
The Path — Summary
RUNNING along a bank, a parapet That saves from the precipitous wood below The level road, there is a path. It serves Children for looking down the long smooth steep, Between the legs of beech and yew, to where A fallen tree checks the sight: while men and women Content themselves with the road and what they see Over the bank, and what the children tell. The path, winding like silver, trickles on, Bordered and even invaded by thinnest moss That tries to cover roots and crumbling chalk With gold, olive, and emerald, but in vain. The children wear it. They have flattened the bank On top, and silvered it between the moss With the current of their feet, year after year. But the road is houseless, and leads not to school. To see a child is rare there, and the eye Has but the road, the wood that overhangs And underyawns it, and the path that looks As if it led on to some legendary Or fancied place where men have wished to go And stay; till, sudden, it ends where the wood ends.