Pilgrims

‘ Have you not seen
    
⁠In ancient times
Pilgrims pass by
    
⁠Toward other climes?
With shining faces,
    
⁠Youthful and strong,
Mounting this hill
    
⁠With speech and with song?’

‘ Ah, my good sir,
    
⁠I know not those ways:
Little my knowledge,

    Tho' many my days.
When I have slumbered,
    
⁠I have heard sounds
As of travellers passing
    
⁠These my grounds:

‘ ’Twas a sweet music
    
⁠Wafted them by,
I could not tell
    
⁠If afar off or nigh.
Unless I dreamed it,
    
⁠This was of yore:
I never told it
    
⁠To mortal before;

‘ Never remembered
    But in my dreams,
What to me waking
    
⁠A miracle seems.”

Credit

From Poems of Nature (The Bodley Head, 1895) by Henry David Thoreau. Copyright © 1895 by Henry David Thoreau. This poem is in the public domain. This poem is in the public domain.