Destroyers and Other Verses/Home-coming

by Henry Head

 

Home-coming.

Where men of every nation
Go up and down the Rhine,
Within Cologne Cathedral
Three wise men have a shrine.

League upon league in the darkness,
By the light of a shining star,
To seek their soul's salvation,
They journey'd from afar.

But when they turned them homeward,
No star was then in sight,
Deep in each heart lay treasured
The memory of its light.

By the light of your love I have travelled,
Till I'm weary and sick and sore,
But I dread my lonely journey,
When that star will shine no more.

Cologne, July, 1855.