Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908). An American Anthology, 1787–1900. 1900.

By Mark A. De WolfeHowe

1545 The Travellers

THEY made them ready and we saw them go

Out of our very lives;

Yet this world holds them all,

And soon it must befall

That we shall know

How this one fares, how that one thrives;

And one day—who knows when?

They shall be with us here again.

Another traveller left us late

Whose life was as the soul of ours;

A stranger guest went with him to the gate,

And closed it breathing back a breath of flowers.

And what the eyes we loved now look upon,

What industries the hands employ,

In what new speech the tongue hath joy,

We may not know—until one day,

And then another, as our toil is done,

The same still guest shall visit us,

And one by one

Shall take us by the hand and say,

“Come with me to the country marvellous,

Where he has dwelt so long beyond your sight.

’T were idle waiting for his own return

That ne’er shall be; face the perpetual light,

And with him learn

Whate’er the heavens unfold of knowledge infinite.”

Each after each then shall we rise,

And follow through the stranger’s secret gate,

And we shall ask and hear, beyond surmise,

What glorious life is his, since desolate

We stood about the bed

Where our blind eyes looked down on him as dead.