Read "The Distant Road" by Henry van Dyke online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Blessed is the man that beholdeth the face of a friend in a far country, / The darkness of his heart is melted by the dawning of day within him, / It is like the sound of a sweet music heard long ago and half forgotten: / It is like the coming back of birds to a wood when the winter is ended.
I knew not the sweetness of the fountain till I found it flowing in the desert, / Nor the value of a friend till we met in a land that was crowded and lonely.
The multitude of mankind had bewildered me and oppressed me, / And I complained to God, Why hast thou made the world so wide?
But when my friend came the wideness of the world had no more terror, / Because we were glad together among men to whom we were strangers.
It seemed as if I had been reading a book in a foreign language, / And suddenly I came upon a page written in the tongue of my childhood.
This was the gentle heart of my friend who quietly understood me, / The open and loving heart whose meaning was clear without a word.
O thou great Companion who carest for all thy pilgrims and strangers, / I thank thee heartily for the comfort of a comrade on the distant road.