Page:The roamer and other poems (1920).djvu/128

118 Passion of life I knew, the quick fierce joys

Of action, and dull vintages of pain.

Ah, many a breast to me has night unsealed,

Scarred with dark writings of God's secrecy,

But most my own: dyed in the blood of man

Is all my knowledge; in the human flood

Deep was I dipped, and took the mortal stain.

Though sin be on my soul, woe in my heart,

So was I darkly mixed with all my race,—

One flame of life, one swift aspiring joy,

One body of delight, one weight of pain,

One spirit of man, One human, One divine."

"Whence hadst thou this?" The Roamer, venturing near,

Made him a third in that close company,

And drew upon himself a face of dream,

So spiritualized was the dark flesh,

With sorrows ploughed, and intimate with pain.

"Brother," the voice replied with courtesy,

"Such knowledge came not at the first,—I knew

The bittter [sic] taste of life, the solitude

Of evil, and the desert of myself.

Ah, long I lay in that abandonment,

Till one, a stranger youth, beside me crept

And bared his bosom; therein I beheld

The wingèd soul mired in its own sweet clay,—