Page:Collected poems Robinson, Edwin Arlington.djvu/77

 me and the sunset, like a dome Against the glory of a world on fire, Now burned a sudden hill, Bleak, round, and high, by flame-lit height made higher, With nothing on it for the flame to kill Save one who moved and was alone up there To loom before the chaos and the glare As if he were the last god going home Unto his last desire. Dark, marvelous, and inscrutable he moved on Till down the fiery distance he was gone, Like one of those eternal, remote things That range across a man's imaginings When a sure music fills him and he knows What he may say thereafter to few men, The touch of ages having wrought An echo and a glimpse of what he thought A phantom or a legend until then; For whether lighted over ways that save, Or lured from all repose, If he go on too far to find a grave, Mostly alone he goes. Even he, who stood where I had found him, On high with fire all round him, Who moved along the molten west, And over the round hill's crest That seemed half ready with him to go down, Flame-bitten and flame-cleft, As if there were to be no last thing left Of a nameless unimaginable town,—