Yet now, when one whose life has never known
Corruption, as you know: whose days have been
As daily tidings in your heart of lone
And gentle courage, suffers the word unclean
Of envious tongues, doubting you dare not cry—
“I have been this man’s familiar, and you lie.”
REALITY
It is strange how we travel the wide world over,
And see great churches and foreign streets,
And armies afoot and kings of wonder,
And deeds a-doing to fill the sheets
That grave historians will pen
To ferment the brains of simple men.
And all the time the heart remembers
The quiet habit of one far place,
The drawings and books, the turn of a passage,
The glance of a dear familiar face,
And there is the true cosmopolis,
While the thronging world a phantom is.
EPILOGUE
Come tell us, you that travel far
With brave or shabby merchandise,
Have you saluted any star
That goes uncourtiered in the skies?
Do you remember leaf or wing
Or brook the willows leant along,
Or any small familiar thing
That passed you as you went along?
Or does the trade that is your lust
Drive you as yoke-beasts driven apace,
Making the world a road of dust
From market-place to market-place?