Page:The roamer and other poems (1920).djvu/130

120 The Roamer said; "God grant us so to live,

With others' lives commingling and involved

Until the larger self takes form in us

Whereby we rise to perfect charity,

One with mankind." "And dost thou live?"

Broke the low whisper hesitant from him

Who bore life's stigma; "more than mortal light

Clothes thy bright limbs, and even as one of us

Thou seemest discarnate, though to eye and ear

Thou art all human, as a mortal dream

Is figured thought." "Love held me in his grace

And from my birth I sleep upon his breast;

To learn of him is life"; the Roamer said:

"I go to learn, treading the pilgrim's way

Through lands I know not of. His will be done!"

And on the instant risen, he turned, and bade

God's peace be with them, and they heard amazed.

By flower and shrub the rough way wended on

Pathless, by rise and gully, brush, stone and sand,

And lost itself upon a stretch rock-pronged,

As 't were a place of graves, a bandit-hold.

The black stones in the brilliant sunlight stared,

Mysterious and forbidding, as by each

Some dark-browed danger lay, silent, concealed,

But none appeared; only the rank reed sighed,

And melancholy cast a shadow there