Way-farers lost without a path or way—
Blue-jackets, grimy fellows, women folding
Limp arms round languid babes that they are holding—
That lived on sunken ships; forlorn they stray,
Their names are lost, they wear strange garbs of yore:—
All those who went and then returned no more.
I saw them all, like pallid phantoms pass,
As though I watched them through a blurring glass.
One beckoned dumbly as he passed me by,
And so I followed him, I knew not why.
The way was endless, and it grew and grew.
Our feet were tired and they stumbled too.
And him who fell, his helping neighbor raised.
A woman slipped and when I helped her, dazed
She hung upon my neck, a load of lead.
Deep blue abysses gaped. And overhead,
Like clouds upon the water gray and pale,
The shadows passed of many a giant whale.
One man I looked at more than all the rest.
His languid head hung limp upon his breast,
And then I knew old Peter Jens, the rover,
Who once went overboard, at night by Dover.
I gently pulled his ragged shirt to say—
And then my voice seemed strange and far away—:
"Where are you bound?"—He looked with glassy eye:
"We're seeking, seeking, seeking!" his reply.
"What are you seeking, Jens?"—He answered: "Land!"—
Then all about who with us crept and drifted,
Their weary, pale and anguished faces lifted.
A wailing trembled all along the sand.
Yet all at once my power seemed to gain.
I turned about with mighty voice to call
Unto this lifeless, ever wandering train:
"Now courage! Follow me! God leads us all! "
