pilgrimages, pilgrim souls, the Pilgrims

I don't know much about what it means to be a pilgrim, to go on a pilgrimage. I do know these three things:

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1.

I know that McSweeney, my 12th grade Honors English teacher, made me memorize the beginning lines of the mellifluous Middle English Prologue of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales:

Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages
And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes
To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;
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Then folk do long to go on pilgrimage,
And palmers to go seeking out strange strands,
To distant shrines well known in distant lands.

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2.

I know what Yeats told me, tells me about a pilgrim soul:

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true;
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face.

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3.

I know that I am descended from John Robinson, who was minister to, leader of a small group of pilgrims, the Pilgrims. He blessed them as they sailed away on a boat called the Mayflower. I know that his wife was named Bridget Robinson. I know that our name is an eerie coincidence as my mother learned of our lineage years after she inked my newly minted name on a birth certificate.