Page:The roamer and other poems (1920).djvu/24

14 With caverned vale on vale, the vast defile

Leapt up night's core; and like a man who shakes

With hope of what he fears, he saw, far off,

The darkness, gathering up from the wide world

In his forecasting heart, take awful shape

Upon the burning glare; terrific gloom

Stood on the mountains, black with dragon-coils,—

The vision that he dreamed, the hope he dared,

Since from the angelic flight of innocent years

There stooped and touched his lips such rosy flame

That God's might in him cannot ever die.

O, how he kindled at the very foe

Made instant visible! the fabled place,

Whose horror crests the lone eternal steep,

The goal of lost adventure, goal and grave!

There, by the slope, and worming o'er the edge,

The narrow track of noble peril ran;

And, thinly springing, many a lonely sheaf

Of beamy blades and starry-dipping points

Flashed back the battle of the dying world.

He saw—he sprang—he heard the challenge peal,

Caught like the mighty blast of Roland dead

Far-blown from standards of the fallen Christ;

And light o'erllowed within him, light long sought,