Beyond the Hills of Dream

The Wayfarer

He woke with the dawning
Met eyes with the sun,
And drank the wild rapture
Of living begun.

But he went with the moment
To follow the clue,
Ere the first red of dawning
Had drunk the blue dew.

Follow him, follow him,
Where the world will,
Under the sunlight
By meadow and hill.

Down the blue distance,
Round the world’s rim,
Where the hosts of the future
Are horning for him.

Follow him, call to him,
Pray to him, Sweet,
Tell him the morning
Is fresh for his feet;

Sing him the rapture,
The glamour, the gleam
Of pearly dew-azure
That curtains the stream;

Sing the glad thrushnote
That never knew pain,
But sing him and call him
And pray him in vain.

For ere the red dewdrop
In sunlight was pearled,
He heard that mad ocean
That whelms the world.

Yea, heard that voice calling
Past sunlight and dew,
That rarest, alluringest,
Ever heart knew.

That siren of sunrise,
That weaver of songs,
Till the heart of man hearkens
And gladdens and longs,

Till o’er the blue distance,
As opens the rose,
The yearning impulsion
Of all his life goes;

And many a dragon
Chimera so grim,
Down the dream of the morning
Is vanquished by him.

Yea, sing to him, call him through
Heartache in vain.
But the gladdest day wakened
To glory, must wane;

And the noonday he longed for
To fierce light will burn,
And the battles he wages
Grow bitter and stern;

And the surge of life sink
To the moan of a bar;
And the hopes of the morning
Grow hollow and far;

And the road that he follows
Less luring and true,
Till he longs for a whiff
Of the morning he knew.

For he hears thy far singing,
That lures not in vain,
Till he comes to thy beauty
Of dawning again.

But the roads of returning
Are never the same
As the sweet dewy meadows
Of morning we came.

But the song of alluring
Is ever as true,
To lead the heart back
To the beauty it knew;

And vain the mad magic
Where life’s glories burn,
For the heart of the yearner
Who longs to return:

For he hears that voice calling,
Voiced never in vain,
To world-heart aweary
For all dreamings fain;

And he hears the low grasses,
The green tents of sod,
From roof-trees of slumber,
As voices of God;

And the spinning and turning,
Of madness amain
Fade out from his dreaming
As night from the pane,

When the rosy-red splendor
In dewdreams impearled,
From ashes of slumber,
Lifts over the world.

Yea, back from those echoes
Of bugles that blew,
Heart-weary, life-broken,
He wanders to you;

Yea, back to his truest,
Those far broken gleams
Of that rosy-red, morning-lit
House of his dreams.

Where all hours were splendid,
And all hearts held true,
In those glory-lit visions
Of beauty and you.

Yea, call to him, cry to him,
Mother of all;
You lit his youth’s torches,
You saw their flames fall.

You loved him, upheld him,
This child of thy breast,
And now give him surcease
In dreamings and rest.

Thy note was the one note
He heard in the fray,
That bore him far out
In the heat of the day;

Thy call is the one call
That beckons him home,
When day-fires darken
By forest and foam.

When o’er all the heartache,
The visions untrue,
Love draws her dim curtains
Of duskfire and dew.

While the bells ring for slumber
As out of the deep,
Come pleading those velvet-winged
Spirits of sleep.

And there at thy doorways
Of slumber he stands,
Like him of old Horeb,
And sees his heart’s lands;

And under the white awe
Of planets that swim,
Knows dawning and even
As one world to him.

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