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A Far Country

1880 –

1960

Beyond the cities I have seen,

Beyond the wrack and din,

There is a wide and fair demesne

Where I have never been.

Away from desert wastes of greed,

Over the peaks of pride,

Across the seas of mortal need

Its citizens abide.

And through the distance though I see

How stern must be the fare,

My feet are ever fain to be

Upon the journey there.

In that far land the only school

The dwellers all attend

Is built upon the Golden Rule,

And man to man is friend.

No war is there nor war’s distress,

But truth and love increase—

It is a realm of pleasantness,

And all her paths are peace.

This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on January 12, 2020, by the Academy of American Poets.

Leslie Pinckney Hill was born in Lynchburg, Virginia, on May 14, 1880. He attended public schools in East Orange, New Jersey, before graduating Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard University with a bachelor’s degree in 1903. He earned a master’s degree a year later.

About Leslie Pinckney Hill

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Themes

About this Poem

“A Far Country” was originally published in The Wings of Oppression (The Stratford Co., 1921).

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More by this poet

The Black Man’s Bit

O there’s talk from school to pulpit, and the barber’s place is rife,
And the shoe shop and the supper table hum,
With the tale of Dixie’s black men who have shared the mighty strife
For that freedom of the better time to come.
Every mother’s eye is brighter, every father’s back is straighter,
And our girls are tripping lightly in their pride,

Leslie Pinckney Hill

1921

“So Quietly”

News item from the New York Times on the lynching of a Negro at Smithville, Ga., December 21, 1919: “The train was boarded so quietly . . . that members of the train crew did not know that the mob had seized the Negro until informed by the prisoner’s guard after the train had left the town . . . A coroner’s inquest held immediately returned the verdict that West came to his death at the hands of unidentified men.”

Leslie Pinckney Hill

1922

Vacation End

From the charm of radiant faces,
From the days we took to dream,
From the joy of open spaces,
From the mountain and the stream,
Bronzed of sunlight, nerves a-tingle,
Keen of limb and clear of head,
Speed we back again to mingle
In the battle for our bread.

Leslie Pinckney Hill

2020

Poems

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A Far Country

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