Page:The roamer and other poems (1920).djvu/143

Rh Where man was not; only the white sand-sea

Lifted its crests, and rolled its arrowy drifts

Frozen in the act of motion, and clomb up

Rare buried palm-clumps, islanding the waste.

How still it was! the elemental world

In its own universe! as from the first,

Before man was, it filled creation's dawn!

The Roamer felt himself a stranger there

As in another world, an older star,

'Mid heavens bright, unknown; and, as he moved

Across that panorama without end,

Sterile and clear, the soft, transparent air

Evoked far objects, the blue glow intense

O'ercanopied the sands, and imprecise

The lines of all things wavered; and, behold!

As when a sailor, cast up by the sea,

Upon an alien coast, in a far land,

Wanders 'mid rocks and hills, and from some cliff

Sees a green valley smile, at half a league,

He saw, nor far, a quiet water set

By scattered palm trees, like a silver streak,

And o'er the placid bank their tall stems leaned.

How firm they cut the insubstantial air,

Like some fair island, seen by barren seas,

Aloof, indifferent to human life,

Still as a vision in a charmèd dream,