John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892). The Poetical Works in Four Volumes. 1892.
Religious PoemsWhat the Traveller said at Sunset
T
I feel the dew-fall in the air;
The muezzin of the darkening thicket,
I hear the night-thrush call to prayer.
And loving hands unclasp from mine;
Alone I go to meet the darkness
Across an awful boundary-line.
I pass with slow, reluctant feet,
What waits me in the land of strangeness?
What face shall smile, what voice shall greet?
What thunder-roll of music stun?
What vast processions sweep before me
Of shapes unknown beneath the sun?
I dread the myriad-voicëd strain;
Give me the unforgotten faces,
And let my lost ones speak again.
Who is our Brother and our Friend;
In whose full life, divine and human,
The heavenly and the earthly blend.
The sense of spiritual strength renewed,
The reverence for the pure and holy,
The dear delight of doing good.
An endless anthem’s rise and fall;
No curious eye is mine to measure
The pearl gate and the jasper wall.
What matter if I never know
Why Aldebaran’s star is ruddy,
Or warmer Sirius white as snow!
I go Thy larger truth to prove;
Thy mercy shall transcend my longing:
I seek but love, and Thou art Love!
Safe in Thy sheltering goodness still,
And all that hope and faith foreshadow
Made perfect in Thy holy will!