| Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908). An American Anthology, 1787–1900. 1900. |
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| 1545. The Travellers |
| | | By Mark A. De Wolfe Howe |
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| 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 | 5 |
| How this one fares, how that one thrives; | |
| And one day—who knows when? | |
| They shall be with us here again. | |
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| Another traveller left us late | |
| Whose life was as the soul of ours; | 10 |
| 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, | 15 |
| 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, | 20 |
| “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 | 25 |
| 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 | 30 |
| We stood about the bed | |
| Where our blind eyes looked down on him as dead. | |
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