| THE WESTERN ROAD goes streaming out to seek the cleanly wild, | |
| It pours the city’s dim desires towards the undefiled, | |
| It sweeps betwixt the huddled homes about its eddies grown | |
| To smear the little space between the city and the sown: | |
| The torments of that seething tide who is there that can see? | 5 |
| There’s one who walked with starry feet the western road by me! | |
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| He is the Drover of the soul; he leads the flock of men | |
| All wistful on that weary track, and brings them back again. | |
| The dreaming few, the slaving crew, the motley caste of life— | |
| The wastrel and artificer, the harlot and the wife— | 10 |
| They may not rest, for ever pressed by one they cannot see: | |
| The one who walked with starry feet the western road by me. | |
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| He drives them east, he drives them west, between the dark and light; | |
| He pastures them in city pens, he leads them home at night. | |
| The towery trams, the threaded trains, like shuttles to and fro | 15 |
| To weave the web of working days in ceaseless travel go. | |
| How harsh the woof, how long the weft! who shall the fabric see? | |
| The one who walked with starry feet the western road by me! | |
| |
| Throughout the living joyful year at lifeless tasks to strive, | |
| And scarcely at the end to save gentility alive; | 20 |
| The villa plot to sow and reap, to act the villa lie, | |
| Beset by villa fears to live, midst villa dreams to die; | |
| Ah, who can know the dreary woe? and who the splendour see? | |
| The one who walked with starry feet the western road by me. | |
| |
| Behold! he lent me as we went the vision of the seer; | 25 |
| Behold! I saw the life of men, the life of God shine clear. | |
| I saw the hidden Spirit’s thrust; I saw the race fulfil | |
| The spiral of its steep ascent, predestined of the Will. | |
| Yet not unled, but shepherded by one they may not see— | |
| The one who walked with starry feet the western road by me! | 30 |
