Poems (Hooper)/To a Traveler
TO A TRAVELER.
Ami, vous revenez d'un de ces longs voyages.
From one of those long journeys you returnThat make us old and us to sages turn, Scarce from our cradle come.Each ocean saw your wandering shadow pass,And you have girdled all the world, alas! With your ship's track of foam.
Your life has ripened under twenty skies,Led only by your will's inconstancies, You plucked or from you cast.Like to the laborers who reap and sow,Something you grasped, and of yourself let go Something, where'er you passed.
Whilst I, your friend, less happy and less wise,Saw seasons pass beneath the self-same skies; And, like the verdant treeThat shades my home, my life beside this doorHas taken root, my days here evermore Fall like dead leaves from me.
You've seen so much of mankind, you are wearyAnd worn out with that contemplation dreary, To God your thoughts aspire.You sadly tell me of your fruitless toil,While of three worlds your feet have mixed the soil With ashes of my fire.
And now, your heart full of dreams deep and rare,Your hands upon my children's golden hair, You question me anew.Thus mournfully your anxious queries run:"Where are thy parents, and where is thy son?" Oh, friend, they journey too!
No sun nor moon above their path shall shine;So jealous is the Master, all resign Their treasures at his call.Far off and limitless the path they go,With mournful faces and with footsteps slow, And we must follow all.
I saw you leave us, friend, and even soI saw them all at divers seasons go; They one by one took flight.Now I have laid those dear heads 'neath the clay;I, miser-like, have buried deep away My treasures from the light.
I saw them go! I, weak and full of fears,Saw thrice a black cloth sprinkled with white tears, This corridor enfold.On their cold hands I, like a woman, wept;Yet my soul saw their souls, while cold they slept, Open their wings of gold.
I saw them go, as swallows swift take wingTo seek new summers and more faithful spring Upon a far-off shore.My mother first went, first beheld the skies:And a strange glory lit her dying eyes, A light unseen before.
My first-born followed, then my father went;Full forty years of war their snows had lent To age his veteran brow.And now they sleep amid the shadows gray,The while their souls pass on their somber way, And go where we must go.
And when the moon has set we, if you will,When night has come, will both ascend the hill Where our departed rest.And I will ask, while you behold displayedThe cities of the sleeping and the dead, Which of them sleep the best?
Come, silent both, we each shall bend an earProne on the earth, and we shall surely hear (While Paris slumbers-still)The million dead, the harvest of the tomb,Like grain within the furrow, in the gloom Stir with confuséd thrill.
How many joyous live who still should weepOver their dear ones who eternal sleep. Oh, might of years that pass!The dead endure not, leave them in their gloom,They fall to dust less quickly in the tomb, Than 1n our hearts, alas!
O traveler! our madness who can say?Who knows the dead that men forget each day? The best-loved leave no trace.Who knows how quickly human grief may pass?How many graves one day of growing grass May from the earth efface?Victor Hugo.