Page:Poems, now first collected, Stedman, 1897.djvu/76

FATHER JARDINE Unquestioning aught, aye, in the eager West

Surcharged with life that mocks the vague unknown,

His ligature of anguish unconfest

He wore alone—alone.

Alone? but trebly welded links of fate

More lives than one are bidden to endure,

Forged in a chain's indissoluble weight

Of agonies more sure.

His torture was self-torture; to his soul

No jest of time irrevocably brought

A woe more grim than underneath the stole

His gnawing cincture wrought.

Belike my garments,—yes, or thine,—conceal

The sorer wound, the pitiabler throe,

Not even the traitor Death shall quite reveal

For his rough mutes to know.

What the heart hungered for and was denied,

Still foiled with guerdons for a world to see 56