Far are those tranquil hills, <br />Dyed with fair evening's rose; <br />On urgent, secret errand bent, <br />A traveller goes. <br /> <br />Approach him strangers three, <br />Barefooted, cowled; their eyes <br />Scan the lone, hastening solitary <br />With dumb surmise. <br /> <br />One instant in close speech <br />With them he doth confer: <br />God-sped, he hasteneth on, <br />That anxious traveller…. <br /> <br />I was that man — in a dream: <br />And each world's night in vain <br />I patient wait on sleep to unveil <br />Those vivid hills again. <br /> <br />Would that they three could know <br />How yet burns on in me <br />Love — from one lost in Paradise — <br />For their grave courtesy.<br /><br />Walter de la Mare<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-three-strangers/
