So through that country wended he his way,
Resting anights, till on the seventh day
He passed unwares into another land,
Whose people’s speech he could not understand—­
A tract o’er-run with tribes barbarian,
And blood-red from the strife of man with man: 
And truly ’twas a thing miraculous
That one should traverse all that rude land thus,
And no man rid him of his gold, nor raise
A hand to make abridgment of his days;
But there was that about him could make men’s
Hearts, ere they knew it, yield him reverence,—­
Perchance a sovran something in his eye,
Whereat the fierce heart failed, it wist not why;—­
Perchance that Fate which (hovering like a doubt
Athwart his being) hemmed him round about,
Gloomed as a visible shadow across his way,
And made men fearful.  Be this as it may,
No harm befell him in that land, and so
He came at last to where the ebb and flow
Of other seas than he had wandered o’er
Upflung to landward an attempered roar;
And wandering downward to the beach, he clomb
To topmost of a tall grey cliff, wherefrom
He saw a smoke as of men’s houses, far
Off, from a jutting point peninsular
Uprising:  whence he deemed that there a town
Must surely be.  And so he clambered down
The cliff, and getting him again to horse
Thither along the seabound held his course,
And reached that city about sunset-tide
The smoking of whose hearths he had espied.

There at an hostel rested he, and there
Tarried the coming of the morn.  But ere
He fell asleep that night, a wandering thought,
Through darkling byeways of the spirit brought,
Knock’d at his soul for entrance, whispering low
“What if to-night thou dream The Dream, and know
To-morrow, when thou wakest from that bliss,
The land wherein thou liest to be his
Who hath the mystic jewel in his keep?”
So, full of flattering hope he fell asleep,
And sleeping dreamed, but dreamed not that he would: 
For at one time it seemed as if he stood
Alone upon a sterile neck of land,
Where round about him upon either hand
Was darkness, and the cry of a dark sea,
And worldwide vapours glooming thunderously;
And ever as he stood, the unstable ground
Slid from beneath his feet with a great sound,
Till he could find no foothold anywhere
That seemed not unsubstantial as the air. 
At otherwhiles he wandered all alone
About a lonely land, and heard a moan
As of some bird that sang and singing grieved;
And peering all about the woods thick-leaved
If so he might espy the bird, he found
At length, after long searching, that the sound
Even from the bottom of his own heart came,
And unawares his own mouth sang the same. 
And then in dream ’twas like as years went by,
And still he journeyed, hardly knowing why,
Till at the last a mist about him fell,
And if the mist were death he could not tell,
For after that he knew no more.  And so
He slept until the cock began to crow.