Evening descended o'er the suburbs dim;
The unfolding mantle of the night obscured
Streets slowly threaded, as that stranger traced
His path through tortuous avenues of stone,
And labyrinthine maze of alleys joined.

God made the desert in its liberty
Open to sky and wind, its trackless paths,
Its boundless aisles and rocky altar-shrines,
Its wild caves cleft within the mountain's heart,
Sublimest holds where nobler creatures tread
Apart in inaccessible solitudes;
Patricians mingling not with the base herd,
Inferior life that hides in lesser dens,
Where the wolf stalks and the hyaena howls,
And crawling reptiles fascinate or strike.

Man built the town, the imitative wild
Of limitless dimension, where the air
Is tainted with infection — where lurk dens
Darkened by crime unknown to brutes; and there
The affinities of kindred nature shown,
There the same tiger-spring, the hyaena-laugh
Of triumph, there the cold and slimy coil
Of the enfolding snake and venomed sting;
The web of art around the weaker closed,
The hate, the covert purpose, and the stroke;
The tyranny that tramples on the neck
Of meek submission. These the feral kin,
The impulsive passions of material life,
Unreined by disciplined restraint, that hive
Burrowing in caverns of humanity.

Night deepened o'er the byways, faintly starred
By scintillating lamps that pointed light
Through murkiest avenues; pale rays that fell
Upon the faces of the restless mass
That crowded erewhile silent thoroughfares.
Threading his pathway among human tides,
A man absorbed, who nothing saw or heard,
The Stranger trod as one from them apart.
His garb of sable indicated him
Who mourned the dead, and thus advance repelled;
For mourning still arrests the lightest eye
And causes pause, and forces sudden thought
Upon the thoughtless, or repelled or owned;
While the sedate advance, and measured tread,
And the calm face, awed license; for the shows
Of grief still wear the aspect of rebuke,
Or softened or austere.
They passed him thus,
Even as a warning to be seen and shunned;
And they who gain the bread they do not earn,
The daughters of necessity, turned from him
As from in-seeing eyes; and they who stared
With the hard looks of stony apathy,
Or smile of trade, or phrase of habit spoke;
But when they met his staid regard, and heard
Accents less of reproach than sympathy,
They passed, but passing sighed: for those deep tones
Recalled the voices they had heard and loved
(What woman has not loved?) remembered then
In that quick moment when arise again
The garden-paradise where once she trod,
Erring, but human still. And thus he walked,
'Midst them inviolate, as if the robe
Of the Apostle covered him. What formed
The arresting spell? They read upon his brow
That he had suffered like themselves; they saw
His human kindred in his face; they felt
That he had given to them more than gold,
Even the sympathy within his soul.

He stood before a lonely dwelling-place
That opened on the river, where the masts
Of barks shot up as from a leafless wood.
Before the front of that lone tenement,
Low-browed, and desolate, he passed; a wall
Shut out the path, the entrance-door was barred.
Beside that threshold momently he stood,
As one who counsel weighed ere entering.
The inner aspect of that domicile
Reflected him who tenanted. It was
A chamber overshadowed as a cell,
Now softened by the pale and sober light
From the one lamp that on the table gleamed;
Scantily decked, but with no semblance touched
Of poverty; columns from each coign arose,
Crowned with the busts of the four seers, ordained
By God to be the formative elements
Of everlasting poetry.
There shone
Bearded Maeonides with brow sublime;
The Mantuan, whose immortality grew
Tracing his footsteps; the diviner man
Who saw Lost Paradise and that Regained;
And he, the mightiest, with eyes benign,
The demigod who dwelt by Avon's stream.
Within the casement's central pane was hung
A golden crest emblazoned, and beneath
The shield armorial of the king who won
His deathless fame on Crecy's stricken field.
The lamp its ray of moonlight lustre cast
Upon his features as he sat; his brow
Leant on his hand as one in thought absorbed.
No musing lines dwelt round his lips abstract,
No plaintive or accusing spirit paled
His passive face; the massiveness of will
Sate on the central forehead as a throne.
No feverish fancies couched in his calm eyes,
Glossing our nature's weakness, but the power
That analyses ill; that draws the shaft,
And heals the medicable wound, and breathes
The comfort sought; that binds with equal hands
The shattered vesture of humanity,
And veils its nakedness.
As one arrived
To the sought haven found, he drew aside
The curtain folded o'er the door; he called
Upon the voice within, that answered him
In the familiar and kindred tone
Of home, that breathes a music in each note,
Echoed and understood. He raised the latch,
And, entering, before his Mother stood.