Page:The roamer and other poems (1920).djvu/21

Rh Ah, yet must fall on him the heavier change,

Which who knows not, his soul hath never known

The wandering sea that moans and mourns in man

The melancholy load and charge of song,

Voices rebellions, dismal wailing loss

The pæan of the long betrayal flung

Up from the sounding flood to sun and stars—

And souls like waves move there, each with its cry—

The sea of life; he felt from world-wide woe,

Vague breaking upon vague, the life-song rise,

Blind music, wandering o'er the face of things,

Heard in his heart, and heard creation through.

But when the treason was, that worked so sore,

And in himself he knew the doom begun,

And felt the blood of man, is dark to me;

Only he made him friends with night and storm,

The sad woods roved, and paced the passionate shore,

And ever on the desert's border hung,

Disturbed, distressful, watched by rising stars.

Deep in his breast the iron entered in,

Savage and sudden, thrust and stroke unseen,

And life went ebbing from his every wound.

Then by the stream that girds the world he sat,

Looking on night, and felt within him fear