The bell-wether’s tinkle, or clatter of horse-hoofs. 
A homestead is nigh us:  I will fare down the highway
And seek for some helping:  folk said simple people
Abode in this valley, and these may avail us—­
If aught it avail us to live for a little. 
—­Yea, give it us, God!—­all the fame and the glory
We fought for and gained once; the life of well-doing,
Fair deed thrusting on deed, and no day forgotten;
And due worship of folk that his great heart had holpen;—­
All I prayed for him once now no longer I pray for. 
Let it all pass away as my warm breath now passeth
In the chill of the morning mist wherewith thou hidest
Fair vale and grey mountain of the land we are come to! 
Let it all pass away! but some peace and some pleasure
I pray for him yet, and that I may behold it. 
A prayer little and lowly,—­and we in the old time
When the world lay before us, were we hard to the lowly? 
Thou know’st we were kind, howso hard to be beaten;
Wilt thou help us this last time? or what hast thou hidden
We know not, we name not, some crown for our striving? 
—­O body and soul of my son, may God keep thee! 
For, as lone as thou liest in a land that we see not
When the world loseth thee, what is left for its losing?
          [Exit OLIVER.

THE MUSIC

LOVE IS ENOUGH:  cherish life that abideth,
  Lest ye die ere ye know him, and curse and misname him;
For who knows in what ruin of all hope he hideth,
On what wings of the terror of darkness he rideth? 
  And what is the joy of man’s life that ye blame him
    For his bliss grown a sword, and his rest grown a fire?

Ye who tremble for death, or the death of desire,
  Pass about the cold winter-tide garden and ponder
On the rose in his glory amidst of June’s fire,
  On the languor of noontide that gathered the thunder,
  On the morn and its freshness, the eve and its wonder;
    Ye may wake it no more—­shall Spring come to awaken?

Live on, for Love liveth, and earth shall be shaken
  By the wind of his wings on the triumphing morning,
When the dead, and their deeds that die not shall awaken,
  And the world’s tale shall sound in your trumpet of warning,
  And the sun smite the banner called Scorn of the Scorning,
    And dead pain ye shall trample, dead fruitless desire,
    As ye wend to pluck out the new world from the fire._

Enter before the curtain, LOVE clad as a Pilgrim.

LOVE

Alone, afar from home doth Pharamond lie,
Drawn near to death, ye deem—­or what draws nigh? 
Afar from home—­and have ye any deeming
How far may be that country of his dreaming? 
Is it not time, is it not time, say ye,
That we the day-star in the sky should see?