Wanderer

John Armistead CollierDreamy

Alone with my Dream in a dying world!— None will see nor hear. The Light I would bear witness to Shrines too bright for mortal eyes And blinds them with its radiance; The ethereal tones I listen for Are far beyond the range of mortal sense.

Oh, that I could pour the truth of my wild dream Into one human heart and set it afire With the beauty that enraptures me! Then would I cease to be an outcast And a wanderer, stalking like a spectre Through the world, haunted by the music Of an unuttered song—hiding my woe In the words in which I vainly seek to tell my Tale.

What shall I do to ease this burning fever Of earthly love that is consuming me? Must I wear my heart out crying Unheard in the wilderness— And slink away in silence and the dark? Will no one ever see The Truth that imprisons me Will no one ever come to speak the word That will set me free?

John Armistead Collier

SourceLicence:Public domain (US, unrenewed)

Mood:: Dreamy
Topics:: dream, light, fever, wilderness

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Summary

The speaker is someone who has seen something extraordinary, a light too bright and a music too fine for ordinary people to take in, and cannot make anyone else understand it. That's the heart of "Wanderer": the loneliness of carrying a vision you can't share. The speaker calls himself an outcast and compares himself to a spectre drifting through a world that seems to be fading around him. He keeps trying to tell his "Tale," but the words fail him.

His mood shifts as the poem moves along. At first there's a kind of awe, then a hungry wish to set another person's heart "afire" with what he knows. By the final stanza that wish has turned to near-despair. He talks of a burning fever and of crying "unheard in the wilderness," and he ends on a question nobody answers. The poem leaves us with his longing for one listener, and for release from being the only one who sees.

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