Page:The roamer and other poems (1920).djvu/28

18 And lost, but that the visionary sense,

His guiding birthright, visited the dark

And drew him where the Will Divine would lead;

Through woe, and want, and wastes of all neglect,

Remorseless realms, the tracts of base distress,

The wilds of thought, the deserts of desire;

And oft behind he came who dwelleth there,

The Whisperer of the wildernesses lost,

O, winning was his voice, and wise his craft,

His early harmonies not all forgot,

That once the hymns of heaven had paused to hear;

The fluting of bird-throated winds of morn,

The sighing reed of memory at eve,

Hope in the soul and in the heart regret;

In loveliest things deepest his deep disguise.

The gentle heart he sang, its own delight,

Virtue, the conscious nobleness of life,

Knowledge, man's earthly immortality;

And on the god's own lyre, divinely hymned,

Joy, beauty, truth, and love, and noble fame

Sprang ever, and the feigning Muses danced,

And, with the song consenting, Nature moved.

And oft the Roamer slipped, and oft he fell

With rose-snared feet, and night came on the plain;

But duly would the evening star come forth,