THE MYSTIC FRIENDS

I nothing did all yesterday

But listen to the singing rain

On roof and weeping window-pane,

And,‘ whiles I'd watch the flying spray

And smoking breakers in the bay:

Nothing but this did I all day —

Save turn anon to trim the fire

With a new log, and mark it roar

And flame with yellow tongues for more

To feed its mystical desire.

No other comrades save these three,

The fire, the rain, and the wild sea,

All day from morn till night had I —

Yea! and the wind, with fitful cry,

Like a hound whining at the door.

Yet seemed it, as to sleep I turned,

Pausing a little while to pray,

That not mis-spent had been the day;

That I had somehow wisdom learned

From those wild waters in the bay,

And from the fire as it burned;

And that the rain, in some strange way,

Had words of high import to say;

And that the wind, with fitful cry,

Did some immortal message try,

Striving to make some meaning clear

Important for my soul to hear.

But what the meaning of the rain,

And what the wisdom of the fire,

And what the warning of the wind,

And what the sea would tell, in vain

My soul doth of itself enquire,—

And yet a meaning too doth find:

For what am I that hears and sees

But a strange brother of all these

That blindly move, and wordless cry,

And I, mysteriously I,

Answer in blood and bone and breath

To what my gnomic kindred saith;

And, as in me they all have part,

Translate their message to my heart —

And know, yet know not, what they say:

Know not, yet know, the fire's tongue

And the rain's elegiac song,

And the white language of the spray,

And all the wind meant yesterday —

Yea! wiser he, when the day ends,

Who shared it with those four strange friends.