Pilgrims by Henry David Thoreau

‘Have you not seen / In ancient times / Pilgrims pass by / Toward other climes?

With shining faces, / Youthful and strong, / Mounting this hill / With speech and with song?'

‘Ah, my good sir, / I know not those ways:

Little my knowledge, / Tho' many my days.

When I have slumbered, / I have heard sounds / As of travellers passing / These my grounds:

‘'Twas a sweet music / Wafted them by, / I could not tell / If afar off or nigh.

Unless I dreamed it, / This was of yore:

I never told it / To mortal before;

‘Never remembered / But in my dreams, / What to me waking / A miracle seems. '