W. Wilfred Campbell - The Wayfarer lyrics

He woke with the dawning Met eyes with the sun, And drank the wild rapture Of living begun. But he went with the moment To follow the clue, Ere the first red of dawning Had drunk the blue dew. Follow him, follow him, Where the world will, Under the sunlight By meadow and hill. Down the blue distance, Round the world's rim, Where the hosts of the future Are horning for him. Follow him, call to him, Pray to him, Sweet, Tell him the morning Is fresh for his feet; Sing him the rapture, The glamour, the gleam Of pearly dew-azure That curtains the stream; Sing the glad thrushnote That never knew pain, But sing him and call him And pray him in vain. For ere the red dewdrop In sunlight was pearled, He heard that mad ocean That whelms the world. Yea, heard that voice calling Past sunlight and dew, That rarest, alluringest, Ever heart knew. That siren of sunrise, That weaver of songs, Till the heart of man hearkens And gladdens and longs, Till o'er the blue distance, As opens the rose, The yearning impulsion Of all his life goes; And many a dragon Chimera so grim, Down the dream of the morning Is vanquished by him. Yea, sing to him, call him through Heartache in vain. But the gladdest day wakened To glory, must wane; And the noonday he longed for To fierce light will burn, And the battles he wages Grow bitter and stern; And the surge of life sink To the moan of a bar; And the hopes of the morning Grow hollow and far; And the road that he follows Less luring and true, Till he longs for a whiff Of the morning he knew. For he hears thy far singing, That lures not in vain, Till he comes to thy beauty Of dawning again. But the roads of returning Are never the same As the sweet dewy meadows Of morning we came. But the song of alluring Is ever as true, To lead the heart back To the beauty it knew; And vain the mad magic Where life's glories burn, For the heart of the yearner Who longs to return: For he hears that voice calling, Voiced never in vain, To world-heart aweary For all dreamings fain; And he hears the low gra**es, The green tents of sod, From roof-trees of slumber, As voices of God; And the spinning and turning, Of madness amain Fade out from his dreaming As night from the pane, When the rosy-red splendor In dewdreams impearled, From ashes of slumber, Lifts over the world. Yea, back from those echoes Of bugles that blew, Heart-weary, life-broken, He wanders to you; Yea, back to his truest, Those far broken gleams Of that rosy-red, morning-lit House of his dreams. Where all hours were splendid, And all hearts held true, In those glory-lit visions Of beauty and you. Yea, call to him, cry to him, Mother of all; You lit his youth's torches, You saw their flames fall. You loved him, upheld him, This child of thy breast, And now give him surcease In dreamings and rest. Thy note was the one note He heard in the fray, That bore him far out In the heat of the day; Thy call is the one call That beckons him home, When day-fires darken By forest and foam. When o'er all the heartache, The visions untrue, Love draws her dim curtains Of duskfire and dew. While the bells ring for slumber As out of the deep, Come pleading those velvet-winged Spirits of sleep. And there at thy doorways Of slumber he stands, Like him of old Horeb, And sees his heart's lands; And under the white awe Of planets that swim, Knows dawning and even As one world to him.