The Awaited Leader

“When is he coming? We have watched since morning,
We weary of this waiting; night grows late,
The winds are very bleak, the skies untender,
Our faith grows chill; of what avail to wait?
Long have we hoped, long sought, and long attended,
Caught at false shadows which misled our love.
Say, is he coming? He our souls’ desire,
Sworn to conduct us to the heights above?”

“How can I tell you? Do I not wait likewise?
Have I not also watched the dull hours glide;
Have I not wearied of this stagnant shore-line
Washed by one dark and never-varying tide?
Are not my seed-plots, like your own, untended;
With dock and ragweed filled from side to side,
With bristling chardocks, thistles, nettles, burdocks,
Lost in their tense and tangled maze I bide.

“This much I know. In all this dreary prospect
There is no spot so barren, bald, or dun,
No weedy grassland, no neglected hillside,
Unused by man, unfostered by the sun,
No, not one puny, mud-banked, stagnant streamlet
O’er which at dusk the meanest insects hum,
But will shine out a very star in splendour
When he at last, the long-desired, shall come.

“Do you then purpose to abide his coming
On this bleak ridgeway, watching from afar,
Wearing your soul out in a fruitless longing,
like one who waits to espy some unborn star?
No, for I weary, and to sleep is pleasant,
I shall await him on the shadowy strand,
No need to warn me! I shall feel him coming,
Thrilling the deep heart of this buried land.”