The Pilgrims of Hope | Page 4

we
wandered and long was the day, But now cometh eve at the end of the
village, Where over the grey wall the church riseth grey.
There is wind in the twilight; in the white road before us The straw
from the ox-yard is blowing about; The moon's rim is rising, a star
glitters o'er us, And the vane on the spire-top is swinging in doubt.
Down there dips the highway, toward the bridge crossing over The
brook that runs on to the Thames and the sea. Draw closer, my sweet,
we are lover and lover; This eve art thou given to gladness and me.
Shall we be glad always? Come closer and hearken: Three fields further
on, as they told me down there, When the young moon has set, if the
March sky should darken, We might see from the hill-top the great
city's glare.
Hark, the wind in the elm-boughs! From London it bloweth, And
telling of gold, and of hope and unrest; Of power that helps not; of
wisdom that knoweth, But teacheth not aught of the worst and the best.
Of the rich men it telleth, and strange is the story How they have, and
they hanker, and grip far and wide; And they live and they die, and the
earth and its glory Has been but a burden they scarce might abide.
Hark! the March wind again of a people is telling; Of the life that they
live there, so haggard and grim, That if we and our love amidst them
had been dwelling My fondness had faltered, thy beauty grown dim.
This land we have loved in our love and our leisure For them hangs in
heaven, high out of their reach; The wide hills o'er the sea-plain for
them have no pleasure, The grey homes of their fathers no story to

teach.
The singers have sung and the builders have builded, The painters have
fashioned their tales of delight; For what and for whom hath the world's
book been gilded, When all is for these but the blackness of night?
How long and for what is their patience abiding? How oft and how oft
shall their story be told, While the hope that none seeketh in darkness is
hiding And in grief and in sorrow the world groweth old?
Come back to the inn, love, and the lights and the fire, And the fiddler's
old tune and the shuffling of feet; For there in a while shall be rest and
desire, And there shall the morrow's uprising be sweet.
Yet, love, as we wend the wind bloweth behind us And beareth the last
tale it telleth to-night, How here in the spring-tide the message shall
find us; For the hope that none seeketh is coming to light.
Like the seed of midwinter, unheeded, unperished, Like the
autumn-sown wheat 'neath the snow lying green, Like the love that
o'ertook us, unawares and uncherished, Like the babe 'neath thy girdle
that groweth unseen,
So the hope of the people now buddeth and groweth - Rest fadeth
before it, and blindness and fear; It biddeth us learn all the wisdom it
knoweth; It hath found us and held us, and biddeth us hear:
For it beareth the message: "Rise up on the morrow And go on your
ways toward the doubt and the strife; Join hope to our hope and blend
sorrow with sorrow, And seek for men's love in the short days of life."
But lo, the old inn, and the lights and the fire, And the fiddler's old tune
and the shuffling of feet; Soon for us shall be quiet and rest and desire,
And to-morrow's uprising to deeds shall be sweet.

THE BRIDGE AND THE STREET

In the midst of the bridge there we stopped and we wondered In
London at last, and the moon going down, All sullied and red where the
mast-wood was sundered By the void of the night-mist, the breath of
the town.
On each side lay the City, and Thames ran between it Dark, struggling,
unheard 'neath the wheels and the feet. A strange dream it was that we
ever had seen it, And strange was the hope we had wandered to meet.
Was all nought but confusion? What man and what master Had each of

these people that hastened along? Like a flood flowed the faces, and
faster and faster Went the drift of the feet of the hurrying throng.
Till all these seemed but one thing, and we twain another, A thing frail
and feeble and young and unknown; What sign mid all these to tell
foeman from brother? What sign of the hope in our hearts that had
grown?
We went to our lodging afar from the river, And slept and forgot--and
remembered in dreams;