Poetry Corner

Going Down Hill on a Bicycle

By Henry Charles Beeching

A boy's song

With lifted feet, hands still,

I am poised, and down the hill

Dart, with heedful mind;

The air goes by in a wind.

Swifter and yet more swift,

Till the heart with a mighty lift

Makes the lungs laugh, the throat cry:—

"O bird, see; see, bird, I fly.

"Is this, is this your joy?

O bird, then I, though a boy,

For a golden moment share

Your feathery life in air!”

Say, heart, is there aught like this

In a world that is full of bliss?

'Tis more than skating, bound

Steel-shod to the level ground.

Speed slackens now, I float

Awhile in my airy boat;

Till, when the wheels scarce crawl,

My feet to the treadles fall.

Alas, that the longest hill

Must end in a vale; but still,

Who climbs with toil, wheresoe'er,

Shall find wings waiting there.

This poem is in the public domain.

About the poet: Henry Charles Beeching, an English clergyman and author, was born on May 15, 1859, and educated at the City of London school and at Balliol College, Oxford. He took holy orders in 1882, and after three years in a Liverpool curacy he was for fifteen years rector of Yattendon, Berkshire. From 1900 to 1903 he lectured on pastoral and liturgical theology at King’s College, London, and was chaplain of Lincoln’s Inn, where he became preacher in 1903. He became a canon of Westminster in 1902, and examining chaplain to the bishop of Carlisle in 1905. From 1911 to 1919, he was Dean of Norwich. As a poet he is best known by his share in two volumes—Love in Idleness (1883) and Love’s Looking Glass (1891)—which contained also poems by J. W. Mackail and J. Bowyer Nichols. He was a sympathetic editor and critic of the works of many 16th and 17th century poets, of Richard Crashaw (1905), of Herrick (1907), of John Milton (1900), of Henry Vaughan (1896). Under the pseudonym of “Urbanus Sylvan” he published two successful volumes of essays, Pages from a Private Diary (1898) and Provincial Letters and other Papers (1906). His works also include numerous volumes of sermons and essays on theological subjects. He died on February 25, 1919, at the age of 59.