Where did they end,—those pathways wild and lone
Through the dark forest? Lay some shore unknown
Beyond them, where the wind first taught the trees
The sweet sad voices of the murmuring seas?
Oh, whither did they call? The long arcades
Led ever to remoter, dimmer shades;
And from the farthest crest a pathway dipped
Down to some lonelier aisle or darker crypt.
Dear were the open fields to us, and dear
The homely path, the sound of human cheer;
But ’twas the way no foot of man had worn,
The forest’s undiscoverable bourne,
That made our world so wide, its end so far:
And when, in the evening through the trees, a star
Shone o’er the darkening solitudes, it seemed
Nearer than those long quests of which we dreamed.

One day we wandered farther than before
Through leafy maze and dusky corridor
Into the forest’s heart, when far away
We saw a low horizon line of grey
Where all before was dark; and by degrees
Through wider openings among the trees
The daylight grew; and we who thought we stood
Deep in the hidden cloisters of the wood
Were at its end,—only at last to find
A world like that which we had left behind.
There, out beyond us in the evening gold,
Lay homely meadowlands, and farm and fold:
The path we followed to the unknown shore
Led in the end but to some cottage door.

There, with the forest’s end, those regions vast
That childhood showed us, into dreamland passed.
The great world was beyond us; far away,
Over the hills, the lands we knew not lay,—
But others knew them! Now the secret clue
We followed melted in the noonday’s blue,
Or hid among the stars. That broken road
Taught us the boundaries of our abode,—
The gulf ’twixt heaven and earth. A bridge unseen
The hope or faith of man might build between
Our home on earth and some celestial shore;
But ’twas for us no longer to explore
The paths of brave adventure which we trod
In childhood, to the unknown lands of God.

The dreamer is the youth who finds the ends
Of paths that once were endless, who ascends
The peaks that once in heaven seemed to glow,
Only to see the glory spread below;
For whom the rose of eve, the morning’s gold,
The starlight shining over field and fold,
The voice of wind and wave, the wild flowers’ scent,
Waken a want where once they brought content.
He dreams: the vanished wonder that those days
Of childhood showed him on familiar ways
He cherishes,—he dreams that they exist
On pathways still afar or somewhere missed.
Where knowledge from his world the beauty stole,
The inborn light of beauty in his soul
Relumes it, and endows a world unseen
With all the splendour of the might-have-been.
Pleasures beguile him, and that light within
Lends its own beauty to the face of sin,
Or flares to fire of passion that consumes
The very loveliness its light illumes.
He dreams of love, and every pathway’s bend
Holds him expectant, every journey’s end
Gives promise of the tryst, the hour supreme
That shall reveal the maiden of his dream.
His faith is in himself: he would reform
The world with love, and take his Heaven by storm.
The great adventure calls him: he would build
On earth his visions, and his heart is thrilled
Those labours to complete which God left unfulfilled.

And when the night fell all the unknown stars
Grew homely shining through our window bars.

Now we have fared to the country o’er the hill,
And unknown journeys lie beyond us still;—

Ways unadventured, countless paths to roam,
But none that leads us in the evening home.

Onward, not homeward, some adventure calls
With every dawn, and every evening falls

Over new horizons, wild-rose or grey,
And old stars shining on the unknown way

Strange look and far, not those we saw of old
Safe moored in haven skies above our fold.

Now we must part from home and friend.
We have treasures of youth to spend:
Braver ventures, fairer maidens
Wait for us where the old ways end.

Now for the quest unknown, untried,
Now for the path with none to guide.
Dawns that glimmer on new horizons,
Starlit camps on the mountain side.

For our dreams remain, and the wonders flown
From the world that we knew and called our own,
Are ours to follow by shores uncharted,
Ours to seek in a land unknown;

Dreams that give to the thing life shows,
What the sky gives earth, when the evening glows
On the lonely hills, and the distant places
Blossom in gold and purple and rose.

Spake to us voices of scorn and ruth:
“He who follows the dreams of youth,
He who seeks for an outworn wonder
Flies himself from the whips of truth.”

“For yours is nought but the hunter’s zest;—
Your love but love of the unpossessed.
Is the world God filled with the light not fairer
Than all the dreams of your soul’s unrest?”

Ah no! the world that God designed
He shows us in dreams, but leaves mankind
To shape to His plan. The goal He gave,
But the path to the goal ’tis ours to find.

No meaner plan than our dream unrolls
Can ever again content our souls;
The wonder fades from the paths around us,
Our faith remains in the unseen goals.

The wonder outlasts, the goals exist;
The beauty abides, but the way we missed;
And a mile may open the way we looked for
A turn may lead to the longed-for tryst.

We travelled by an old and beaten road,
But everything we saw was strange and new:
Each ripple of the mountain stream that flowed
Beside us, every drop of sunlit dew
That filled the flowers that on the wayside grew,
The laughter of the south-west wind at play
Along its own untrodden path of blue,
All made the earth forget its yesterday,
And with their own youth touched that old and beaten way.

They told us that our road would lead at last
Into the world,—not that which once was spread
Before our childhood’s dream, unknown and vast,
But one which man had fashioned in its stead.
This world lay now before us, and we sped
To drink its wonders, counting not the cost.
Our endless pathways to their ends had led;
The bounds of our unbounded we had crossed;
The unknown way was found, but our old world was lost.

We had exchanged our infinite domains,
The undiscovered regions of our quest,
For the round earth wherein no sea remains
Uncharted, and no land is unpossessed;
But still our hearts were filled with the old zest
To travel and adventure and explore:
The unknown called us, we could find no rest
Till, by those paths which men had trod before,
We found the world they found and bore the loads they bore.

With every soul that on the earth is born
The whole creation is made young again;
And all the paths that pilgrim feet have worn
Are new for those who follow,—every stain
That marred them is washed out by sun and rain,
And verdure fresh makes all their borders sweet.
So on that road of bygone joy and pain,
With the day’s new-born flowers about our feet,
We sought an ancient world grown young our youth to greet.

And pleasant of that world it was to think,
And all that we had heard in song and lore
Of old grey cities on the ocean’s brink,
Where to their anchorage the great ships bore
Bales from the Orient, and golden store
From the far south, and, dark and grim and tall,
Behind the dreaming masts rose floor on floor,
Warehouse and granary, and over all
Loomed some great tower or dome of Mary or of Paul.

The vanished regions of our old surmise
We mourned not now, for eager we had grown
To read the record of the centuries,
And enter the great kingdoms of the known.
Ay! better than the unexplored and lone
We deemed that world in which the human heart
Was written, where mankind had built and sown,
And fought for truth and love, and taken part
In the eighth day’s creation—God-inspired Art.

And now our island earth, our bounded home
Took new dimensions,—Time transfigured Space;
And we beheld vast realms through which to roam
Within the limits of our dwelling-place.
Dim pathways of the past we turned to pace,
And far receding vistas of the years
Opened old wonderlands; ’twas ours to trace
The labyrinths of love, the vales of tears,
And toward the unknown future march as pioneers.

Along the borders of that beaten way
Was many a landmark of man’s mortal fate;
But hope was ever written in decay,
And simple things interpreted the great.
A charm was in the wild flowers to translate
Death’s ruth, a benediction in the stone
Of ruined abbey walls to consecrate
The skies that roofed them, and to link the lone
Illimitable paths of heaven with our own.

But for far heavenly paths we had no care
While still that road before us was untried,
And the world called to us its joys to share,
Its lore to read, its destinies to guide.
Our hearts were filled with a terrestrial pride;
We loved our world and gloried in the fame
Of those who in its service lived and died,
Who fought and laboured to create its claim
Amid the countless spheres to hold an honoured name.

To other gods than ours the past has knelt,
And creed and cause may sever us or bind;
But here upon our common road we felt
The bond of bonds that links all humankind,—
Man’s pilgrim fellowship. Through rain and wind,
In sunshine and beneath the starry deep,
There is one goal for all the world to find,
A sacred hope to guard, a watch to keep,
And in a little while the comradeship of sleep.

Flowers we knew in the homeland bordered the unknown way;
Things we had known and loved in the paths we had left behind,
Only these we found,—the song of the south-west wind,
Gold of the evening, rose of the sunset, twilight grey.

But the way, the way was unknown, and each turn of the way unguessed,
And the spell of the unforeseen transfigured the things we knew,
And filled the whispering woods and the flowers that hung in the dew,
And dreamed on the darkening hills and the roselit cloud in the west.

Twilight fell on the land, and clear against vistas dim
Near things stood large,—the towers of ancient elms
Loomed on glimmering fields, dark keeps of shadowy realms;
And the first stars shone in the eastern sky on the upland’s rim.

One by one around us, golden lights in the dusk
Glowed in many a window of unseen cottage and farm:
And sweet through the cool of the dew came ripples of air still warm
From the shelter of old walled gardens that breathed of honey and musk.

We came to a little village and our rest at the long day’s close:
The stars shone over the street where the folk were lingering still;
The stars looked down on the stars in the dark pool under the mill;
The infinite deeps of the heaven were touched with the earth’s repose.

Bright heavenly tracts outshone; but never a way so sweet
As a homely path on the earth where the wild flowers hid in the dew,
And a girl went home through the fields, and the darkness thrilled with a clue
That linked the loneliest star with the flowers she touched with her feet.

And pleasant it was to rest awhile in that old-world nook,
And dream of the unknown way and the country over the hill,
While the stars shone down on our beds, and the village street was still,
And sleep came over the fields in the wandering song of the brook.

Over our pilgrim fellowship there came
A change, and though our road was still the same
Our dreams divided us, and visions fair
Filled us with longings that we could not share.
All that once called us to the unknown quest
Was hidden now within a maiden’s breast;
All that was far away and wild and sweet
Shone in her eyes and blossomed at her feet.
She was our wonderland, our golden shore,
The unknown world we travelled to explore,
Our goal, not one far distant and unseen,
But near, and with no barrier between
To check us or to hide it from our sight,
Save our own hesitation or her flight.
Across the beaten road she passed; she led
Through trackless regions, beckoned us or fled,
We knew not which; we knew not if her face
Appealed for help, or called us to the chase.
Strife and confusion to our lives she brought,
But life itself in lovelier hues she wrought.
She was our spirit’s guide, our passion’s lure:
She was the world’s undoing and its cure.

Of this enchantment, of the wild pursuit
That woke in us the errant knight or brute,
Of this confusion that upon us fell,
Some do not speak, and none the same thing tell;
And some were lost or made themselves a track
Through lands unknown, and some at last came back,—
One with a new light shining in his eyes,
One with the burden of his memories,
One with his blood for new pursuit on fire,
One weary seeking for his heart’s desire;
And one who brought back to the beaten road
A song of love that lightened half our load.

Comrades we met again; but though the way
Was still the same, and though the night and day,
The flowers at our feet, the stars above,
Shone as before,—the mystery of love
Filled heaven and earth with something new and sweet
And wild and sorrowful and incomplete,
And once more called us to the unknown quest
To seek the unfulfilled and unpossessed.

He courted her with glowing flatteries,
With praises that he then deemed nought but truth,
While all he sought seemed hidden in her eyes,
And all the joy of earth was in her youth.

He gave her the brief homage of desire;
She gave him what a maid but once can give;
She lit, but could not keep alight, love’s fire;
They parted, they had still their lives to live.

And many a merry bout with many a lass
Had he, until a wiser course he saw,
And wedded a fair lady of his class
Who bore him children sanctioned by the law.

She kept her secret and her love of life,
And, wistful sometimes when that episode
Her dreams recalled, became an honest wife,
And shared with a good man the common load.

Another of our comrades, in those days
When wisdom has for youth no argument,
And conscience on him no commandment lays
That can prevail against a maid’s consent,—

He also found that ’twas the hot pursuit
And not the maiden that inspired his zest;
And other fairer maids of fleeter foot
Called him from one too easily possessed.

But she was not of those who make the slip
And miss the fall, like many a merry dame:
She felt the tightening of dishonour’s grip,
Still loving him who brought on her the shame.

And one day walking by a river bank,
He found a little group of villagers
Standing beside a body, dead and dank,—
And when he looked the face he saw was hers.

The conduct of these comrades was akin,
Though the world read it in the sequel’s light:
The one through life recalled a pleasant sin;
Remorse pursued the other day and night.

And, are you Nature’s weakling instrument,
Your fortune may be such as prompts a laugh
Among good fellows; or the fire she lent
May burn into your soul an epitaph.

He was a man whose instincts all inclined
To virtue, when the path of virtue led
Through pleasant places; venial, but too kind
To wrong a woman, and too poor to wed.

She, weak and all too generously dowered
By Nature with the warmth of womanhood,—
Her Tree of Life was wantonly deflowered
Ere she had learned the evil and the good.

She joined the outcast sisterhood who play
The loveless parts of love that they may live,
And feigned the passion that had ebbed away,
And sold what she was born on earth to give.

See love, that once like crystal springs welled up
In cloisters of the hills without a stain,
Here served as from a common drinking cup
Held at a city fountain by a chain!

Chance brought these two together, and they played
At lover’s parts, while each the falsehood guessed:
She read old Brute Desire’s masquerade,
He knew that ’twas his gold that she caressed.

His heart was touched with less of scorn than ruth
For her and for her sisters; soon he paid
Not with gold only, but with dreams of youth,
And half his former faith in man and maid.

Soon was her brief career of folly run;
And, beauty fading, left her poor indeed;
Nor, of her hundred lovers, was there one
To help her in the hour of pain and need.

Of those whom Passion’s wandering desires
Drove or beguiled to gates that duty barred,
The contest of the elemental fires
Of flesh and spirit strengthened some, some marred.

These conscious of the right, to sin afraid,
Obedient in deed but not in heart,—
These never brought dishonour on a maid,
Nor left their gold with women of the mart;

But, while the outward evil they eschewed,
They lusted for the fruit they dared not touch;
The path they feared to tread their dreams pursued,
And left them bondsmen in temptation’s clutch;

Who ruled by appetites they dared not feed,
And cursed by passions that were meant to bless,
Learnt that to such abstention is decreed
Punishment stern as that which smites excess.

The others no less warm of blood than they,
Like them by duty checked in the pursuit,
Disdained to peer through gates that barred the way,
And feed their fancies on forbidden fruit.

Their faith in love, like the clear noonday lit
Those tangled pathways of the lure, the mesh:
They went their way refusing to submit
To tyrannies of conscience or of flesh.

They matched their wills with nature’s brutal force,
And readily their servant it became:
Their joy was like the rider’s in the horse
Whose spirit he controls but would not tame.

Life’s keen activities, the toil, the play,
The venture, all that put their strength to test,—
These sped their thoughts and turned their hearts away
From sloth’s seductions and desire’s unrest.

But Love was with them: no unchecked desires
Or wandering fancies ever brought the thrill,
The joy in womanhood, that lit love’s fires
In these of the clean blood and strengthened will.

For them love’s passion, when it found its rest,
Glowed with a light no after-gloom could mar,
Soft as the wild-rose glory in the west
That, fading, lifts the veil that hides a star.

Is this the world we sought? Is this our dream
Of life’s warm heart; and yon divided host!
Is that the camp that marks the latest stage
On man’s adventurous quest? Full well we knew
That we had left behind the peace that dwells
In quiet woodland ways. Yes, for we dreamed
Of danger and of strife, of sorrow and sin;
But always in our dream a battle song
Called us to fields unwon, and evermore,
Above the failure and the sacrifice,
We heard the voice of hope that told the world
It laboured not in vain. Is this that world?
This the great comrade host? Our eyes are dim;
For we have seen the saddest sight on earth,—
Her faithless millions.
Toil and strife and sin,
Pity and love we see; but what that speaks
Of man’s belief in a great destiny?
What symbol shines before us? Not the sword!—
The noble cause unsheaths it not: we fight
Not to save others, nay, we hardly dare
To fight to save our honour or ourselves.
The cross? It stands aloft on spire and dome,
An ornament above the empty church,
While underneath it in the market-place
We kneel, we bow before the Belly-god.
He is our own! Behold we fashioned him!
We fattened him, as bees create their queen,
Shaped him with our inventions, in his frame
Ordered blind forces to mechanic law.
But lo! his breath is but an engine throb;
He knows not love nor ruth; he has no soul,—
This idol in our midst, our Belly-god.
He offers us the substance of the known,
He asks no faith in the unseen, he prompts
No sacrifice that earns not its reward.
Comfort and wealth he promises to man,
He shows the poor the gold he gave the rich
And bids them take it, and the rich he arms
Against the poor.
How different a world
From that we pictured, when we watched the dawn
Break on the blue horizon of the hills
That ringed our quiet homeland, and we dwelt
Among the scattered friendly folk. Our dreams
Then told us of profounder tides of life,
Nobler activities, more glorious tasks,
Born of the strength of numbers; now we see
Weakness, not strength, in numbers, where no cause,
No common faith unites them; now we hear
The sound of the great moving multitude
That marches without goal or leader, nay,
That marches not, but spreads.
What profits it
That man shall gain the world and lose his soul?
What that he conquer nature and enslave
Her forces, if he stands himself a slave
Ruled by his own inventions? What that bread
Be cheaper to the poor, if life itself
Have lost its savour, and the daily toil
Grown so mechanical, themselves become
But parts of the machine they tend? ’Twere well
If they could see in this dull servitude
Some noble purpose, or behold at last
Its help to the world; but they discern no end
Save riches gathered, and the luxury
They envy but can never hope to share.
What have we gained in welfare to atone
For beauty lost? This spreading human mass
Has marred earth’s lovely ways with steam and oil,
And soon will desecrate the paths of heaven
With loud excursions. Soon the earth will keep
No hiding-place for Pan, no solitude
Among the hills, no cloisters of the woods.
And what of that if Nature’s loveliness
Were but a sacrifice? if for that loss
The world had gained new joy? if the wild charm
Of solitude, the beauty that the feet
Of men destroy had passed into their souls,
And gave the weary toilers of the town
New hope? But no! the beauty we destroy
Leaves us no child behind: humanity
Is robbed for ever; and the poor, for whom
Beauty was the one priceless thing on earth,
Save love, that without payment was their own,—
They are the most bereft.
How shall we stay
This thing called progress, this machinery
Fashioned by man to drive and crush himself,
This crafty servant of the Belly-god,
That multiplies our wealth and starves our souls?
Was it for this vile servitude that man
Contended through the ages with the powers
Of darkness, till at last he saw the star
Of Freedom shining on his onward way?
Out of that vast contention, from that Hell
Of suffering and sacrifice at last
Rising victorious, the victory
Should be indeed heroic, and the goal
Beyond it something nobler than the quest
Of treasure upon earth;—ay, though that wealth
Be subdivided, and mankind become
A brotherhood of prosperous shareholders.

This is the world! Our dream of life’s warm heart
Beating with greater purposes, and fired
With nobler aims, where the great companies
Of men are gathered:—all is unfulfilled;
And yet our dream lives on!
Oh, cherish it!
’Twas given us to guard: ’tis the design
Of the Eternal Architect, revealed
To earthly toilers; and ’tis not for man
To shape his dreams to fit the world he finds,
But to rebuild the world to fit his dreams.

What of ourselves, who looking on the world
Condemn its faithlessness? How weak indeed
Must be our own faith if our hope for man
Fails because here the march is retrograde
And there the goal is hidden. We have mourned
Beauty deflowered, and paths of old romance
Trodden to dust; but we remembered not
The waste reclaimed, the pestilential swamp
Drained of its poison. While in vain we sought
The faith that led the old world’s pioneers
Through desert places, we forget that Hell
Of superstition, bigotry, and fear
That tortured countless souls, that bondage vile
From which the world has freed itself at last.
Foul things that never shall be seen again
Have been uprooted; but the beautiful,
The old and lovely things that now are not,—
These are not dead, but in our dreams they hide,
Till love shall charm them back into the world.

’Tis man’s to build; our dream shows God’s design:
The misinterpretation of our dream,
Our faithlessness, is written in the world;
But still the dream remains;—’tis born again
With every child that comes from the unknown
Into our mortal life. ’Twas not for us
To look for the fulfilment of our dream,
Or find our heart’s desire upon the earth:
But it is ours to labour; ay, ’tis ours
Into our labour to translate our dreams.

Come! for our labour calls us to the world,—
The world that bows before the Belly-god
To whom men sacrifice their dreams divine
For meats that perish. Are they satisfied?
Are they not crying, Give us back our dreams?
Come! ’tis for those who have not sold their dreams
To stand together and to lead the world.