The Watch Beyond the Gate
From this day forth, the road shall lead me on,
Beyond the fields where silent rivers bend;
The morning knows the footsteps of the dawn,
Yet never asks what waits beyond the end.
Beneath the cedar, where the shadows fall,
A lantern burns behind a distant gate;
No name is written on the garden wall,
No voice is heard to summon me or wait.
The eastern winds have carried many things,
The prayers of men, the fragrance of the rain;
And every year the wandering swallow brings
A season that shall never come again.
Yet somewhere in the silence of the earth,
A promise rests where neither hand can see;
It asks no witness to proclaim its worth,
Nor any word to tell what it must be.
Should winter gather at the garden door,
The cedar shall receive the falling snow;
And those within shall hear the storm no more,
Nor learn whose branches sheltered them below.
The moon shall pass above the eastern wall,
As once it passed above a distant shore;
And though the leaves of autumn rise and fall,
The ancient path shall lead me evermore.
Before the dawn, when all the lamps grow dim,
I turn toward the light beyond the hill;
And where the waters meet the horizon's rim,
The heart remembers what the lips keep still.
No golden seal shall mark the work of hands,
No marble stone shall bear the hidden vow;
The keeper of the gate alone understands
Why certain branches never learn to bow.
And should the garden bloom in other springs,
When unfamiliar footsteps cross its ground,
May every bird return upon its wings,
And every sleeping flower rest profound.
For I have sought no place beside the flame,
Nor claimed the warmth that reaches through the door;
The lantern need not recognize my name,
Nor know the road that brought me to its shore.
And when the final watch has reached its close,
When shadows gather underneath the tree,
Let morning find the garden and the rose
As undisturbed as they were meant to be.
Then let the eastern wind pass through the leaves,
And carry what no written words could tell;
For what the distant garden still receives
Shall speak of one who guarded it too well.
And if the lantern burns another night,
Beyond the gate where I shall never stand,
The road shall disappear beneath the light,
The rain shall fall upon an empty hand.
Yet when the first pale morning breaks the sky,
And all the sleeping windows open wide,
The cedar shall remain, though none know why,
With all its deepest scars upon the hidden side.