‘Have you not seen
In ancient times
Pilgrims pass by
Toward other climes?
With shining faces,
Youthful and strong,
Mounting this hill
With speech and with song?’
‘Ah, my good sir,
I know not those ways:
Little my knowledge,
Tho’ many my days.
When I have slumbered,
I have heard sounds
As of travellers passing
These my grounds:
‘’Twas a sweet music
Wafted them by,
I could not tell
If afar off or nigh.
Unless I dreamed it,
This was of yore:
I never told it
To mortal before;
‘Never remembered
But in my dreams,
What to me waking
A miracle seems.’
THE DEPARTURE
In this roadstead I have ridden,
In this covert I have hidden;
Friendly thoughts were cliffs to me,
And I hid beneath their lea.
This true people took the stranger,
And warm-hearted housed the ranger;
They received their roving guest,
And have fed him with the best;
Whatsoe’er the land afforded
To the stranger’s wish accorded;
Shook the olive, stripped the vine,
And expressed the strengthening wine.
And by night they did spread o’er him
What by day they spread before him;—
That good-will which was repast
Was his covering at last.
The stranger moored him to their pier
Without anxiety or fear;
By day he walked the sloping land,
By night the gentle heavens he scanned.