The Road Poem by Ruth Manning-Sanders

When the long road ahead is dark with careering
Shapes of evil, and a fiend walks at the side
Of the jingling team to goad them, mad and wide
Plunging and rearing.

Then does the soul,- clutching the reins with the blank
And sullen face of despair, mutter 'mid spattering foam
And turmoil of hoofs and jar and rattle and clank:
' Home, home !'

Oh thou inscrutable gipsy who rememberest
Only wandering, in the night-time when thy team
Placidly stray through dim-lying meadows of rest.
Dost thou dream ?

Then dost thou find the walls of thy caravan
Open, thy lumbering house that clatters a-down the years
To the jolt of the steeds their driver in secret fears.
Enlarge its span;

And set thee at last where thou hast never been,
Oh soul ;—in the familiar place where every stone
And bird and flower are as thy children grown ,
And thou serene,

Beneath thy porch bid'st Change to sit him down.
Time to take off his frayed-out sandals and forget
The trampled roads whose quiet bourn was set
In this fair town ?