Page:The roamer and other poems (1920).djvu/124

114 Open and broad, the highway of the gorge.

So solitary was the solemn road,

So dark with loftiness of tree and rock,

Savage, austere, sublime, he scarcely saw

A form that passed, until it turned and looked

With unremembering eyes and face that seemed

The carven impress of a thousand years,

So was it typical and motionless.

Such brows upon the silent traveler gaze

From reaches of Egyptian colonnades,

Sphinxlike, unindividual, but man,

The immemorial creature of the earth;

Doubtful there shot a momentary gleam

Of recognition through him, as it passed;

And others, singly, up the gorge emerged

Out of the fire-scrawled rock and towering herb

In rare procession,—faces of mankind

That pass through generations, race-renewed;

Life piled on life had stamped their mortal mask;

Each gave him one long look, and disappeared;

And once a name had leapt unto his lips

And died in the vast silence, as in tombs;

But none accosted him out of that dark

Epitome of life, till all were gone;

And, weird of heart, he urged his counter-way

Unto the valley's outlet, and a land