The
Wayfarer
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HE woke
with the dawning
Met eyes with the
sun,
And drank the wild rapture
Of living begun.
But he went with the moment
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To
follow the clue,
Ere the first red of dawning
Had drunk the blue
dew.
Follow him, follow him,
Where the world will,
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Under
the sunlight
By meadow and hill.
Down the blue distance,
Round the world’s
rim,
Where the hosts of the future
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Are
horning for him.
Follow him, call to him,
Pray to him, Sweet,
Tell him the morning
Is fresh for his feet;
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Sing him the rapture,
The glamour, the gleam
Of pearly dew-azure
That curtains the
stream;
Sing the glad thrushnote
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That
never knew pain,
But sing him and call him
And pray him in vain.
For ere the red dewdrop
In sunlight was pearled,
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He heard
that mad ocean
That whelms the world.
Yea, heard that voice calling
Past sunlight and
dew,
That rarest, alluringest,
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Ever
heart knew.
That siren of sunrise,
That weaver of songs,
Till the heart of man hearkens
And gladdens and longs,
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Till o’er the blue distance,
As opens the rose,
The yearning impulsion
Of all his life goes;
And many a dragon
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Chimera
so grim,
Down the dream of the morning
Is vanquished by him.
Yea, sing to him, call him through
Heartache in vain.
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But
the gladdest day wakened
To glory, must wane;
And the noonday he longed for
To fierce light will
burn,
And the battles he wages
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Grow
bitter and stern;
And the surge of life sink
To the moan of a bar;
And the hopes of the morning
Grow hollow and far;
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And the road that he follows
Less luring and true,
Till he longs for a whiff
Of the morning he
knew.
For he hears thy far singing,
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That
lures not in vain,
Till he comes to thy beauty
Of dawning again.
But the roads of returning
Are never the same
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As the
sweet dewy meadows
Of morning we came.
But the song of alluring
Is ever as true,
To lead the heart back
To the beauty it knew;
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And vain the mad magic
Where life’s
glories burn,
For the heart of the yearner
Who longs to return:
For he hears that voice calling,
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Voiced
never in vain,
To world-heart aweary
For all dreamings
fain;
And he hears the low grasses,
The green tents of
sod,
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From
roof-trees of slumber,
As voices of God;
And the spinning and turning,
Of madness amain
Fade out from his dreaming
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As
night from the pane,
When the rosy-red splendor
In dewdreams impearled,
From ashes of slumber,
Lifts over the world.
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Yea, back from those echoes
Of bugles that blew,
Heart-weary, life-broken,
He wanders to you;
Yea, back to his truest,
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Those
far broken gleams
Of that rosy-red, morning lit
House of his dreams.
Where all hours were splendid,
And all hearts held
true,
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In those
glory-lit visions
Of beauty and you.
Yea, call to him, cry to him,
Mother of all;
You lit his youth’s torches, |
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You
saw their flames fall.
You loved him, upheld him,
This child of thy
breast,
And now give him surcease
In dreamings and rest.
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Thy note was the one note
He heard in the fray,
That bore him far out
In the heat of the
day;
Thy call is the one call
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That
beckons him home,
When day-fires darken
By forest and foam.
When o’er all the heartache,
The visions untrue,
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Love
draws her dim curtains
Of duskfire and dew.
While the bells ring for slumber
As out of the deep,
Come pleading those velvet-winged
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Spirits
of sleep.
And there at thy doorways
Of slumber he stands,
Like him of old Horeb,
And sees his heart’s
lands; |
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And under the white awe
Of planets that swim,
Knows dawning and even
As one world to him.
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