{
 "id": "henry-van-dyke-jr/the-distant-road",
 "title": "The Distant Road",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "Henry van Dyke Jr.",
 "poet_slug": "henry-van-dyke-jr",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "The Poems of Henry Van Dyke: Now First Collected and Revised, with Many Hitherto Unpublished",
 "book_slug": "poems-now-first-collected",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 1,
 "container": null,
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1911,
  "venue": "The Poems of Henry Van Dyke: Now First Collected and Revised, with Many Hitherto Unpublished (1911)",
  "note": "Taken from the 1911 first collected edition. That is the printing this text comes from and the first to give the poem a title, not necessarily the poem's first appearance: the volume's own title page describes it as now first collected and revised, and eleven of these twelve poems had already been printed untitled in Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land (1908).",
  "uncertain": true,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/poemsnowfirstcol00vanduoft"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/henry-van-dyke-jr_poetry",
  "file": "poetry.xhtml",
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   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/16134",
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   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3525",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/9372",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/29314",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/43094",
   "https://archive.org/details/poemsofhenryvand00vandrich",
   "https://archive.org/details/buildersotherpoe00vandrich",
   "https://archive.org/details/toilingoffelixan00vandiala",
   "https://archive.org/details/musicotherpoems0000henr_c7v6",
   "https://archive.org/details/poemsnowfirstcol00vanduoft",
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   "https://archive.org/details/thyseaisgreatour00vandiala",
   "https://archive.org/details/chosenpoems0000vand"
  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-20"
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 16,
  "n_stanzas": 8,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 79,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Blessed is the man that beholdeth the face of a friend in a far country,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The darkness of his heart is melted by the dawning of day within him,",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "It is like the sound of a sweet music heard long ago and half forgotten:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It is like the coming back of birds to a wood when the winter is ended.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I knew not the sweetness of the fountain till I found it flowing in the desert,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nor the value of a friend till we met in a land that was crowded and lonely.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "The multitude of mankind had bewildered me and oppressed me,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And I complained to God, Why hast thou made the world so wide?",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "But when my friend came the wideness of the world had no more terror,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Because we were glad together among men to whom we were strangers.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "It seemed as if I had been reading a book in a foreign language,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And suddenly I came upon a page written in the tongue of my childhood.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "This was the gentle heart of my friend who quietly understood me,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The open and loving heart whose meaning was clear without a word.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "O thou great Companion who carest for all thy pilgrims and strangers,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I thank thee heartily for the comfort of a comrade on the distant road.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}