And now our island earth, our bounded home
Took new dimensions,—Time transfigured Space;
And we beheld vast realms through which to roam
Within the limits of our dwelling-place.
Dim pathways of the past we turned to pace,
And far receding vistas of the years
Opened old wonderlands; ’twas ours to trace
The labyrinths of love, the vales of tears,
And toward the unknown future march as pioneers.
Along the borders of that beaten way
Was many a landmark of man’s mortal fate;
But hope was ever written in decay,
And simple things interpreted the great.
A charm was in the wild flowers to translate
Death’s ruth, a benediction in the stone
Of ruined abbey walls to consecrate
The skies that roofed them, and to link the lone
Illimitable paths of heaven with our own.
But for far heavenly paths we had no care
While still that road before us was untried,
And the world called to us its joys to share,
Its lore to read, its destinies to guide.
Our hearts were filled with a terrestrial pride;
We loved our world and gloried in the fame
Of those who in its service lived and died,
Who fought and laboured to create its claim
Amid the countless spheres to hold an honoured name.
To other gods than ours the past has knelt,
And creed and cause may sever us or bind;
But here upon our common road we felt
The bond of bonds that links all humankind,—
Man’s pilgrim fellowship. Through rain and wind,
In sunshine and beneath the starry deep,
There is one goal for all the world to find,
A sacred hope to guard, a watch to keep,
And in a little while the comradeship of sleep.
THE COUNTRY OVER THE HILL
It was evening, and we came to the country over the hill,
A valley of ancient homes and fields with shadowy trees.
The south-west wind was soft with the breath of the south-west seas;
Our unknown pathway followed the wandering song of a rill.
Flowers we knew in the homeland bordered the unknown way;
Things we had known and loved in the paths we had left behind,
Only these we found,—the song of the south-west wind,
Gold of the evening, rose of the sunset, twilight grey.
But the way, the way was unknown, and each turn of the way unguessed,
And the spell of the unforeseen transfigured the things we knew,
And filled the whispering woods and the flowers that hung in the dew,
And dreamed on the darkening hills and the roselit cloud in the west.
Twilight fell on the land, and clear against vistas dim
Near things stood large,—the towers of ancient elms
Loomed on glimmering fields, dark keeps of shadowy realms;
And the first stars shone in the eastern sky on the upland’s rim.
One by one around us, golden lights in the dusk
Glowed in many a window of unseen cottage and farm:
And sweet through the cool of the dew came ripples of air still warm
From the shelter of old walled gardens that breathed of honey and musk.