The Poetical Works of William Motherwell/The Wanderer
The Wanderer.
No face I look upon doth greet me
With smile that generous welcome lends;
No ready hand, with cheerful glow,
Is now stretched out, all glad, to meet me:
A chill distrust on every brow,
Assures me I have here no friends!
I miss the music of home voices,
The rushing of the mountain flood,
My country's birds that blithely sung
In woodlands where green May rejoices,
Discoursing love when life was young,
And mirthful ever was my mood.
The breezes soft that fan my cheek,
The bower that shades the sun from me,
The sky that spans this Southern shore,
Do all a different language speak
From breeze and bower I loved of yore.
And sky that spans my own countree.
They bring not health to exiled men—
They light not up the home-bent eye;
No, piece-meal wastes the way-worn frame
That longs to tread its native glen—
That trembles when it hears the name
Of that land where its fathers lie!
The sun which shines seems not the sun
That rose upon my native fields;
Majestic rolls he on his way,
A cloudless course hath he to run—
But beams he with the kindly ray
He to our Northern landscape yields?
The moon that trembles in these skies,
Like to an argent mirror sheen—
Ruling with mistless splendour here—
Does she above the mountains rise,
And smile upon the waters clear,
As in my days of youth I've seen?
O beautiful and peerless light,
That thou should'st seem unlovely now,
That thou should'st fail to wake anew
Those looks of heartfelt pure delight,
Which youthful Fancy upward threw,
While gazing on thy cold, pale brow!
But this is not a kindred land,
Nor this the old familiar stream;
And these are not the friends of youth—
0 heartless, loveless, seems this strand—
Its people lack the kindly ruth,
The soother of life's turbid dream!
Away regret! Here must I die,
Remote from all my soul held dear—
My grave, upon an alien shore,
Will ne'er attract the passer-by
The lonely sleeper to deplore—
No flower will grace, the stranger's bier!
Winds of the melancholy night,
Begin your solemn dirge and bland!
The giant clouds are gathering fast,
The fearful moon withdraws her light—-
In mournful visions of the past,
Again I'll seek my native land!