By Leon Fleming

Through years a pleasant pity grows 

By music and piano’s delight 

And song and raiment filled with light; 

A wealth of treasures hid within 

The pages, folded, withered, thinn’d 

And bound by workings of a craft; 

Indeed, a craft of beauty and fine taste. 

Make brown the evening cloak and book 

With boots and horse to trod 

Down the road in fine splendour clad 

With firm resolution both are glad, 

Both must find the path to travel 

Round the world, notes to make 

In leather books of many page 

Whose sides are blank with naught upon 

Nor writ whilst on the road he plods, 

And still through rain and vast enigma’s wake 

Onward make a furrow, not ingrate 

Was he, whose mien was cloaked in valor brought 

And chained as didst he pass betwixt those many walls 

Of foreign parts and heretofore unseen place. 

Still their path is hard and rough 

With many ruts and unforeseen delays 

While time dost wander onward through their days, 

With aging doth it take their breath away, 

And in finality, refined 

Return they unto their first, original place 

And stay till death doth bring them ever to its waste 

By sickness or by age in time will fall 

Those two who once for long did travel far 

Into the world, and poetry was made 

By his: the hand of Traveler in books 

By light of moon or sun he wrote 

And filled them full with notes and verses such 

As never were there seen within those lands. 

His horse, the weary, faithful steed 

Was taken, namely Trodder was he bade 

To walk again upon the lands, but loth was he to leave 

The home that long was his to call 

When Traveler didst liveth still 

And breathe that air of finest fertile sake. 

So passed them both; not long were they to part 

This world in search of many other paths 

Beyond the physical land; one soul depart 

Whereby the Traveler didst find his Saviour’s land 

By Him alone he left the fertile land 

For greater Kingdom in the heavens rose 

And there he stayed at rest eternally 

And praised the King and Lord o’er all the Earth 

Whose hands did guide him onward far 

Within and unto many untrod lands 

Bringing the name of Christ unto the ears 

Of they who faltered long, no King was placed

Within their hearts of darkness there were filled. 

And many came to know the name of God 

Through words of saint and poet and this Traveler, 

Who now resides to long, forever praise 

The King of earth and hill, of knoll and dale 

While wind still stirs the many, coloured leaves 

Upon the weathered, beaten road.