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 thrush-note
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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 morning 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
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| To
the beauty it knew.
And vain the mad magic
Where life's glories burn,
For the heart of the yearner,
Who longs to return.
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For he hears that voice calling,
Voiced never in vain,
To world-heart aweary
For all dreamings fain.
And he hears the low grasses,
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The
green tents of sod,
From rooftrees of slumber
As voices of God.
And the spinning and turning,
Of madness amain,
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Fade
out from his dreaming
As night from the pane;
When the rosy-red splendour
In dew-dreams impearled,
From ashes of slumber,
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| Lifts
over the world.
Yea, back to those echoes
Of bugles that blew,
Heart-weary, life-broken,
He wanders to you;
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Yea, back to his truest,
Those far broken gleams
Of that rosy-red, morning-lit
House of his dreams,
Where all hours were splendid,
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And
all hearts held true,
In those glory-lit visions
Of beauty and you.
Yea, call to him, cry to him,
Mother of all;
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You
lit his youth's torches,
You saw their flames fall.
You loved him, upheld him,
This child of your breast;
And now give him surcease
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| In
dreamings and rest.
Your note was the one note
He heard in the fray,
That bore him far out
In the heat of the day;
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Your call is the one call
That beckons him home,
When day-fires darken
By forest and foam.
When o'er all the heartache,
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The
visions untrue,
Love draws her dim curtains
Of duskfire and dew.
While the bells ring for slumber
As out of the deep,
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Come
pleading those velvet-winged
Spirits of sleep.
And there at your doorways
Of slumber he stands,
Like him of old Horeb,
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| And
sees his heart's lands;
While under the white awe
Of planets that swim,
Knows dawning and even
As one world to him.
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