WILLIAM VAUGHN MOODY
Leave the early bells at chime,Leave the kindled hearth to blaze,
Leave the trellised panes where children linger out the waking-time,
Leave the forms of sons and fathers trudging through the misty ways,
Leave the sounds of mothers taking up their sweet laborious days.
Pass them by! even while our soul
Yearns to them with keen distress.
Unto them a part is given; we will strive to see the whole.
Dear shall be the banquet table where their singing spirits press;
Dearer be our sacred hunger, and our pilgrim loneliness.
We have felt the ancient swaying
Of the earth before the sun,
On the darkened marge of midnight heard sidereal rivers playing;
Rash it was to bathe our souls there, but we plunged and all was done.
That is lives and lives behind us—lo, our journey is begun!
Careless where our face is set,
[Pg 185] Let us take the open way.
What we are no tongue has told us: Errand-goers who forget?
Soldiers heedless of their harry? Pilgrim people gone astray?
We have heard a voice cry "Wander!" That was all we heard it say.
Ask no more: 'tis much, 'tis much!
Down the road the day-star calls;
Touched with change in the wide heavens, like a leaf the frost winds touch,
Flames the failing moon a moment, ere it shrivels white and falls;
Hid aloft, a wild throat holdeth sweet and sweeter intervals.
Leave him still to ease in song
Half his little heart's unrest:
Speech is his, but we may journey toward the life for which we long.
God, who gives the bird its anguish, maketh nothing manifest,
But upon our lifted foreheads pours the boon of endless quest.
SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY
Do not be alarmed if you find this a little hard to understand. It is expressed in rather figurative language, and one has to study it to get its meaning. The poem is about those people who look forward constantly to something better, and feel that they must always be pressing forward at any cost. Who is represented as speaking? What sort of life are the travelers leaving behind them? Why do they feel a keen distress? What is the[Pg 186] "whole" that they are striving to see? What is their "sacred hunger"? Why is it "dearer" than the feasting of those who stay at home? Notice how the third stanza reminds one of Gloucester Moors. Look up the word sidereal: Can you tell what it means here? "Lives and lives behind us" means a long time ago; you will perhaps have to ask your teacher for its deeper meaning. Do the travelers know where they are going? Why do they set forth? Note the description of the dawn in the fifth stanza. What is the boon of "endless quest"? Why is it spoken of as a gift (boon)? Compare the last line of this poem with the last line of The Wild Ride, on page 161. Perhaps you will be interested to compare the Road-Hymn with Whitman's The Song of the Open Road.
Do the meter and verse-form seem appropriate here? Is anything gained by the difference in the length of the lines?
[Pg 187]