What the Traveller said at Sunset

THE SHADOWS grow and deepen round me,

I feel the dew-fall in the air;

The muezzin of the darkening thicket,

I hear the night-thrush call to prayer.

The evening wind is sad with farewells,

And loving hands unclasp from mine;

Alone I go to meet the darkness

Across an awful boundary-line.

As from the lighted hearths behind me

I pass with slow, reluctant feet,

What waits me in the land of strangeness?

What face shall smile, what voice shall greet?

What space shall awe, what brightness blind me?

What thunder-roll of music stun?

What vast processions sweep before me

Of shapes unknown beneath the sun?

I shrink from unaccustomed glory,

I dread the myriad-voicëd strain;

Give me the unforgotten faces,

And let my lost ones speak again.

He will not chide my mortal yearning

Who is our Brother and our Friend;

In whose full life, divine and human,

The heavenly and the earthly blend.

Mine be the joy of soul-communion,

The sense of spiritual strength renewed,

The reverence for the pure and holy,

The dear delight of doing good.

No fitting ear is mine to listen

An endless anthem’s rise and fall;

No curious eye is mine to measure

The pearl gate and the jasper wall.

For love must needs be more than knowledge:

What matter if I never know

Why Aldebaran’s star is ruddy,

Or warmer Sirius white as snow!

Forgive my human words, O Father!

I go Thy larger truth to prove;

Thy mercy shall transcend my longing:

I seek but love, and Thou art Love!

I go to find my lost and mourned for

Safe in Thy sheltering goodness still,

And all that hope and faith foreshadow

Made perfect in Thy holy will!

1883.