The Travellers - De Wolfe Howe

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.