Page:The roamer and other poems (1920).djvu/15

Rh A greater soul, and in my mortal self

Divined the Roamer; speed, O vital verse,

And first the passion of thy boyhood tell,

And with thy youngest idyls smooth the way!

With idyls life, with idyls song begins.

Ah, then my years expected the sweet bud,

And still put forth no flower, beside the sea.

Ah, then my tender years expected light,

And saw no ray; only the wild reed mine,

And heaven-hunger, such as boyhood knows,

In me begun, forecasting some fair shape—

Frail as the visionary form that comes

On sleeping eyes, but love sleeps not in them

And with desire draws holy souls from heaven,—

Or so I dreamed; and mute the wild reed slept,

But not my heart of boyhood, swift in love;

And unto me that shape of dream was dear,

And dear the dream of music in my hand.

Then as from shadowy pines, before light comes,

A solitary wood-note bursts too soon—

Some bird hath waked, and feels his darkened wings—

Low in the hollow of the sea-blown wood

I set my fingers to the unknown stops,

And blew; and fresh as over quiet fields

Rises the burden of the bough and briar,