Page:The roamer and other poems (1920).djvu/183

Rh XXIX

not what in other men may sleep

Of lower forms, which nature knew to shape

To higher, and from her primal slime escape

To sea, and land, and heaven's aerial deep;

Nor with what stirrings their thick blood may leap

Of ante-natal slaughter, brutish rape;

I own no kinship with the obscene ape;

No beast within my flesh his lair doth keep.

The memory of the rose-tree runs not back

Through the dim transmutations of the rose;

Sphere over sphere, above the solar track,

The round of heaven greatens as it goes;

So am I changed; though the last change I lack,

When over love itself oblivion flows.