The Veil and other poems/The Decoy

by Walter de la Mare

THE DECOY

 
'TELL us, pilgrim, what strange She
Lures and decoys your wanderings on?
Cheek, eye, brow, lip, you scan each face,
Smile, ponder—and are gone.

'Are we not flesh and blood? Mark well.
We touch you with our hands. We speak
A tongue that may earth's secrets tell:
Why further will you seek?'
 
'Far have I come, and far must fare.
Noon and night and morning-prime,
I search the long road, bleak and bare,
That fades away in Time.
 
'On the world's brink its wild weeds shake,
And there my own dust, dark with dew,
Burns with a rose that, sleep or wake,
Beacons me—"Follow true!" '

'Her name, crazed soul? And her degree?
What peace, prize, profit in her breast?'
'A thousand cheating names hath she;
And none fore-tokens rest.'