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The Stranger.

He leaned across the fence
And spoke to me—
A stranger in this place
Of gloom and bitterness.
And I,
Among the orchard trees,
Could only look—and look
Into those eyes, which told
Of things not known
To me and mine.
For we have always dwelt among the shadows;
And ever in our ears the roar
Of torrents.
I told the stranger
That my eyes were dim with mountain mists,
And that there was
A greyness in my soul.
He spoke to me
Of blueness and of gorse.
He told me how the roses and the daffodils
Look beneath the moon at midnight.
He sang for me a bell-bird's song,
And then he sobbed the music of the sea.
He passed
Along the blackness of the road,
And left
The calmness in my soul
Of benediction.

—S.M.