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. |