THE THREE STRANGERS

Far are those tranquil hills,

Dyed with fair evening's rose;

On urgent, secret errand bent,

A traveller goes.

Approach him strangers three,

Barefooted, cowled; their eyes

Scan the lone, hastening solitary

With dumb surmise.

One instant in close speech

With them he doth confer:

God-sped, he hasteneth on,

That anxious traveller...

I was that man — in a dream:

And each world's night in vain

I patient wait on sleep to unveil

Those vivid hills again.

Would that they three could know

How yet burns on in me

Love — from one lost in Paradise —

For their grave courtesy.