The Three Strangers

Far are those tranquil hills,
Dyed with fair evening’s rose;
On urgent, secret errand bent,
A traveller goes.

Approach him strangers three,
Barefooted, cowled; their eyes
Scan the lone, hastening solitary
With dumb surmise.

One instant in close speech
With them he doth confer:
God-sped, he hasteneth on,
That anxious traveller...

I was that man—in a dream:
And each world’s night in vain
I patient wait on sleep to unveil
Those vivid hills again.

Would that they three could know
How yet burns on in me
Love—from one lost in Paradise—
For their grave courtesy.