Page:Masterpieces of German literature volume 18.djvu/387

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Way-farers lost without a path or way—

Blue-jackets, grimy fellows, women folding

Limp arms round languid babes that they are holding—

That lived on sunken ships; forlorn they stray,

Their names are lost, they wear strange garbs of yore:—

All those who went and then returned no more.

I saw them all, like pallid phantoms pass,

As though I watched them through a blurring glass.

One beckoned dumbly as he passed me by,

And so I followed him, I knew not why.

The way was endless, and it grew and grew.

Our feet were tired and they stumbled too.

And him who fell, his helping neighbor raised.

A woman slipped and when I helped her, dazed

She hung upon my neck, a load of lead.

Deep blue abysses gaped. And overhead,

Like clouds upon the water gray and pale,

The shadows passed of many a giant whale.

One man I looked at more than all the rest.

His languid head hung limp upon his breast,

And then I knew old Peter Jens, the rover,

Who once went overboard, at night by Dover.

I gently pulled his ragged shirt to say—

And then my voice seemed strange and far away—:

"Where are you bound?"—He looked with glassy eye:

"We're seeking, seeking, seeking!" his reply.

"What are you seeking, Jens?"—He answered: "Land!"—

Then all about who with us crept and drifted,

Their weary, pale and anguished faces lifted.

A wailing trembled all along the sand.

Yet all at once my power seemed to gain.

I turned about with mighty voice to call

Unto this lifeless, ever wandering train:

"Now courage! Follow me! God leads us all! "