Page:The roamer and other poems (1920).djvu/119

Rh With longing toward those mighty solitudes

Arisen, where far he swept the breaking West.

O whence refreshed from unknown springs divine

The cry, the dark desire, the need to go

Whither the wild heart will? 'T was such a morn

As when in frosty autumns of the North

The honking geese cross the untraveled vague,

Unseen aloft, or heaven-high wedgewise move,

Wild birds in the void air; forward he saw

Where the wide world, westering with dune and butte

Sky-bordering, lifted on the rolling plains

A harsh, scant herbage of dull silvery leaf,

Flooring the solemn dawn. "The herb of grace"—

He heard the old man speak—"grows everywhere;

But sweetest, on the desert border found

And crushed, gives up its fragrant virtue here."

Then the awed Roamer swift bethought himself,

Replying, "Such tranquillity is thine,

So saintly bends toward earth thy age serene,

Scarce mortal thou, though mortal sounds thy voice."

"Mortal—immortal—they are veiling names

Of what is timeless," that old man returned;

"The mystic hours, whose revolutions flash

Shadow and sun upon the ways of men,