Stepping Westward
While my fellow-traveller and I were walking by the side of Loch Katrine, one fine evening after sunset, in our road to a hut where in the course of our tour we had been hospitably entertained some weeks before, we met, in one of the loneliest parts of that solitary region, two well-dressed women, one of whom said to us, by way of greeting, ‘What, you are stepping westward?’
‘What, you are stepping westward?’—‘Yea.’—’Twould be a wildish destiny,If we, who thus together roamIn a strange land, and far from home,Were in this place the guests of chance;Yet who would stop, or fear t’ advance,Though home or shelter he had none,With such a sky to lead him on?
The dewy ground was dark and cold;Behind, all gloomy to behold;And stepping westward seemed to beA kind of heavenly destiny:I liked the greeting; ’twas a soundOf something without place or bound;And seemed to give me spiritual rightTo travel through that region bright.
The voice was soft, and she who spakeWas walking by her native lake;The salutation had to meThe very sound of courtesy;Its power was felt; and while my eyeWas fixed upon the glowing sky,The echo of the voice enwroughtA human sweetness with the thoughtOf travelling through the world that layBefore me in my endless way.