Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908). An American Anthology, 1787–1900. 1900.

By Josephine PrestonPeabody

1671 After Music

I SAW not they were strange, the ways I roam,

Until the music called, and called me thence,

And tears stirred in my heart as tears may come

To lonely children straying far from home,

Who know not how they wandered so, nor whence.

If I might follow far and far away

Unto the country where these songs abide,

I think my soul would wake and find it day,

Would tell me who I am, and why I stray,—

Would tell me who I was before I died.