Page:The roamer and other poems (1920).djvu/125

Rh That seemed an incantation in the morn,—

So instant broke the vast expanded scene

Of a far country, stretching to the West,

Into the infinite of sky and plain,

With black oases spotted, drifted gold,

A place of marvel; long he stood at gaze,

Before it silenced, and his heart was hushed.

Slowly he woke from that undreamt disclose

Of power, of vision, and of mystery.

Larger of soul, and drawing ampler breath,

And even with a silent joy inspired,

He sought the sheer descent, and winding down

By knife-edge ridges and dry torrent beds

Debouched below upon a fair demesne,

A tropic spot; an aged terebinth

Hung, half-reclined, above a sunken slab

Of marble, and a rose-bush blossomed nigh,

And in the shade two pilgrim forms reposed.

Eastern their garb, and dark their hue; they seemed

Companions, met by chance after long time,

Far travel, and in memories immersed;

He, unobserved, beside them drew, and sat.

"That day at Broussa whence our wanderings were,

When, boys, we left the mosque's bare, upper room,

The cradle of our youth," one of them said,

His face half-hid, "where life and prayer were all,—