The mystic in these lines is set apart from ordinary human activity, seated beside a sacred stream and watching the sun trace its full arc. Life appears to him as both a haunting dream and a motley pageant—colorful and varied, but ultimately passing. Sorrow, joy, passion, love, and hate are only actors in costume, blindly moved by fate. The speaker’s tone is calm and a little melancholy, observing both the mystic and the world he watches without urgency or struggle. Even birth, striving, and death belong to a real pageant while the mystic himself feels dreamlike. The repeated image of the stream and the rising and setting sun creates a quiet, meditative, slightly lonely mood. The poem invites a reader to step back, as the mystic does, and see life from a distance.
The Mystic — Summary
The mystic sits by the sacred stream Watching the sun as it mounts the sky; And life to him is a haunting dream Or a motley pageant passing by.
Sorrow and joy go on their way, Passion and lust and love and hate; Only a band of mummers they, Blindly led by the hand of fate.
Though the pageant is real and himself the dream, Though men are born and strive and die, Yet the mystic sits by the sacred stream Watching the sun go down the sky.