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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=536672" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The Wanderer’s Return</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">An old heart's mourning is a hideous thing,<br>And weeds upon an aged weeper cling<br>Like night upon a grave. The city there,<br>Gaunt as a woman who has once been fair,<br>Lay black with winter, and the silent rain<br>Fell thro' the heavens darkly, like a stain<br>Upon her face. The dusky houses rose,<br>Unlovely shapes laid naked on the ooze,<br>Grimed with long sooty tears. The night fell down,<br>And gathered all the highways in its frown.<br>This was my home. I saw men pass and pass<br>Nor stop to look into a neighbour's face.<br>I dared not look in their's because my eyes<br>Were faint and travel--jarred and would not rise<br>From the dull earth, and hunger made them dim,<br>The hunger of a seven years' angry dream<br>Of love and peace and home unsatisfied.<br>And now my heart thus grievously denied<br>Rose, like a caged bird in the nesting time<br>Who beats against the bars that prison him,<br>In all its greenness of youth's wounds and pain<br>And would not cease till these should bleed again.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">For I had gone a hunter through the world,<br>And set my tent in every land, and hurled<br>My spears at life because my joys were dead;<br>And many a fair field of the Earth was red<br>Where I had passed, and many a wind might tell<br>Of stricken souls that to my arrows fell.<br>I would not stop to listen to their cries<br>But went my way and thought that I was wise.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">A wanderer's life, whether his lone chase be man<br>Or only those poor outlaws under ban<br>The creatures of the field his hand destroys<br>Through rage of wantonness or need of noise,<br>Is the fierce solace of its anger given<br>To a hurt soul which dares not turn to Heaven.<br>With me it was a vengeance of love lost,<br>A refuge proved for passions tempest--tossed,<br>An unguent for despairs that could not kill.<br>I wandered in the desert and the hill<br>Seeking dry places, and behold my grief<br>Fled with my footprints and I found relief.<br>And it had happened to me, as befalls<br>Men bred in cities who have left their walls<br>For gain or pleasure, that the wilderness<br>Grew lastly wearisome. I loved it less.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And once a desperate chase had led me on<br>To an unknown land when daylight was near done,<br>And I sat weary by my slaughtered prey<br>And watched the cranes which northward fled away<br>Rank upon rank into the depths of air,<br>And still the horizon lifeless vast and bare<br>Stretched wide around, and like a vault of dread<br>The arch of heaven hemmed me overhead,<br>And the great eye of the dead beast was set<br>Upon my own. I felt my cheek was wet.<br>Oh surely then, for all man's heart be hard,<br>Though he have taken Nature by the beard<br>And lived alone as to the manner born,<br>And though his limbs be strung with toil, and worn<br>To all Earth's dangers, yet at such a time<br>His coward soul will overmaster him,<br>Saying ``Beware, thou child of Earth, even now<br>Look at the world how wide it is and thou<br>How small! And thou hast dared to be alone.''<br>And lo, the last long flight of cranes was gone,<br>And darkness with its folding pity crept<br>Over the plain. I hid my face and wept,<br>Till sleep fell on me. But, when dawn was come,<br>I turned my steps to what had been my home.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The palace gardens! I had fled aside<br>From the gaunt streets in easement of my pride<br>After the lamps were lit, for to my brain<br>The tumult and the passers--by were pain:<br>The gardens where in those far summer times<br>A boy I came to watch the pantomimes<br>Among a laughing crowd of white--capped bonnes<br>And red--cheeked children and loud country clowns,<br>Or where, along the wall in graver sense<br>And screened from winds in their petite Provence,<br>With the first chestnut blossoms old men sat<br>And cheered their melancholy souls with chat,<br>Thawing like frozen apples in the sun!<br>The old men and the children all were gone.<br>The leaves, their canopy, lay torn and dead<br>And crushed in spongy heaps beneath my tread.<br>The fountains recreant to their laughter lay<br>Murk pools of silence shrouded from the day,<br>As though no doves had ever at their brink<br>Stooped in full June to plume themselves and drink.<br>Only the trees stood, witness of the past.<br>Sad trees, I greeted them. I held them fast<br>Like a friend's hands. They were as changed and bare<br>As my own life, but calm in the despair<br>Of their long winter's martyrdom, and I<br>A very child in my philosophy!<br>Till I remembered that no Spring would come<br>To mock the winter of my own long doom<br>With any merriment. And ``Trees'' I cried,<br>``Your hearts within are all too greenly dyed<br>To match with mine.'' I let their branches go<br>And sat upon a bench to feed my woe<br>With memories long hidden out of mind,<br>But which trooped back that night and rode the wind.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">These wooden benches, what sad ghosts of pleasures<br>Had used them nightly crouching o'er their treasures,<br>My own long murdered joys, since there we sat<br>Blind in our love and insolent to Fate!<br>Each one a witness proved of our lost vows,<br>Our prayers, our protests, all our souls' carouse;<br>Each one inscribed through the unheeding years<br>With letters of a name I wrote in tears.<br>'Twas here I saw her first, a pure sweet woman<br>Fair as a goddess but with smile all human,<br>Her children at her knees who went and came<br>At each new wayward impulse of their game,<br>And she reproving with her quiet eyes<br>Veiling the mirth they could not all disguise.<br>The echo of her voice with its mute thrill<br>Lived in these glades and stirred my pulses still,<br>Though I had lived to hear it in what tone<br>Of passionate grief and souls' disunion.<br>She stood, a broken lily, by that tree,<br>Sunlight and shade for ever changingly<br>Chequering the robe she wore of virgin white,<br>When first I touched the goal of my delight<br>Her woman's hand and hid it in my hands.<br>Here shone the glory of her countenance<br>Nobler for tears when weakness for a space<br>Held full dominion in that heaven her face<br>And she confessed herself of grief divine<br>And love grown young, a vintage of new wine,<br>And I was crowned her king. O silent trees,<br>You heard it and you know how to the lees<br>We drained the cup of life and found it good,<br>Gathering love's manna for our daily food,<br>In scorn of the vain rest. You heard and knew<br>What the world only guessed where all was true.<br>And have you dreamed on in your quiet grove<br>While seven years were built against our love!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Twas on this bench I sat that day of June<br>Thinking of death a whole sweet afternoon,<br>Till I was sick of sorrow and my tongue<br>Weary of its long silence (I was young<br>And the birds sang so loud); and when the night<br>Came as it now came, and the lamps grew bright<br>In the long street, lit like a diamond chain,<br>I rose and said: ``I will not bear the pain.<br>What is my pride worth that for it this smart<br>Should harrow up the green things of my heart<br>For twelve importunate hours in such a sort?<br>And pleasure is so sweet and life so short.''<br>And as a martyr, who long time has lain<br>Frozen in a dungeon, sees amid his pain,<br>When he has fasted on for many days,<br>Bright visions of hot feasts and hearths ablaze<br>With welcome, and who sells his gloomy creed,<br>And is overcome of pleasure, so my need<br>Conquered my pride; and I arose and went<br>Striding, with smiles at my new found intent,<br>Down these same gravel alleys to the gate<br>And so beyond, like one inebriate,<br>Thinking the while of the brave baths and food<br>Set for the renegade, until I stood<br>Once more before her door I had forsworn.<br>I did not stop to question thoughts forlorn,<br>But knocked as I had knocked a thousand times.<br>St. Roch's was ringing its last evening chimes,<br>And I still thought about the martyr's dream.<br>I saw the light within the threshold gleam<br>Which opened to me, and the voice I knew<br>Said in all sweetness, as the door swung to,<br>``Come. We are just in time. How fortunate<br>You too like me have happened to be late.''<br>I swear I said no word of the sad plans<br>I had plotted on this bench of ignorance.<br>There have been kings called happy, but not one<br>As I that night. Ah God! to be alone,<br>Alone, and never more to hear her voice<br>Calling me back, blest martyr, to my joys!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I sat there grieving in the cold and rain<br>Until my heart had half forgot its pain,<br>And when I rose I scarce could guide my feet,<br>They were so numb, to the unlovely street.<br>And yet need was my steps should bear me on<br>To some mad corner of that Babylon;<br>And I must feed the gnawings of my soul<br>With broken meat. ``The seven years may roll,''<br>I said, ``and men may change and she be dead,<br>Yet the house stands, God knows how tenanted.''</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I leaned my head against the colonnade<br>Which skirts the square. I think I had not prayed<br>Through all those years, but now I said a prayer,<br>And hope in spite of reason seemed to wear<br>Green buds upon its branches. Who shall know<br>If 'twas a vision sent me in my woe<br>To prove the power of prayer? But, when I turned<br>And looked across the square, the candles burned<br>In the old upper windows, and, before,<br>A shadow crossed the curtain, and the door<br>Opened towards me, and a voice there cried<br>``Come. You are just in time.'' I put out wide<br>My arms into the darkness, and I fell.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">When I awoke, 'twas as one passed from Hell<br>Who fears and feels no longer. I was tired.<br>I scarcely cared to know when I inquired<br>After the house. The girl who held the glass<br>To my lips (a flower--girl it seemed she was)<br>Told me that house and square alike were gone<br>Swept by new boulevards to oblivion.<br>Why should I grieve? The new was worth the old.<br>I listened to the story as 'twas told,<br>And lingered with her all the evening there<br>Because she pitied me and she was fair,<br>And held me with her hand upon the latch.<br>``Seven years,'' I said, ``it is a long night's watch<br>For any soul alone upon life's way,<br>And mine is weary at the break of day.''</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Wilfrid+Scawen+Blunt">Wilfrid Scawen Blunt</a><div class=q>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=536672" data-title="The Wanderer’s Return de Wilfrid Scawen Blunt" data-description="An old heart's mourning is a hideous thing,
And weeds upon an aged weeper cling
Like night upon a grave. The city there,
Gaunt as a woman who has once been fair,
Lay black with winter, and the silent rain
Fell thro' the heavens darkly, like a stai..."></div>
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