Page:The roamer and other poems (1920).djvu/137

Rh The towering clouds, the long-drawn mountain-lines,

The painted plains, the luxury of light,

The expense of power and beauty's ornament,

The glow and sculpture of the dædal earth

Along the roadside, where by nations crawls

The caravan of time? O traitor world!

Thou art the inn of poverty and crime,

The warren of the poor wherein they breed

Hunger and cold, passion and woe, and death

In perpetuity. Kingdoms and states

Are but the shining surface of the flood,

Time's phosphorescence; deep below dips down

The unrecorded misery of the mass,

Creation's underworld. What is 't to men,—

The glamour of great ages yet to be

Wherein they shall not share? or glory gone,

A nameless epitaph?" On the last rise

The landscape sank beneath him, desert-wild,

White valleys of the chotts,—a far-strown world

Of endless desolation, chequered tracts,

Spotted with salty crusts, dim palms and wastes,

Interminable dearth; and in the way

Two, robed in white and worn with travel stains,

Girt with the knotted cord, scanned the strange sight;