Page:The roamer and other poems (1920).djvu/43

Rh By matted vines he hung above the fall;

By jag, and cranny, and rock-withered root,

From doubtful hold to dangerous footing passed;

Nor less did Fraud mount with him unperceived.

At last upon the topmost naked ridge,

Between the great seam and the hanging bank,

He sank for rest, feeling his strength at ebb.

The lower pass beneath him lay unrolled,

A tangled murk of rock and awful shade,

Most like an inlet thrusting gloomy reefs

Up from the sunken vale,—his world that was,

And through its stony heart the black gash drawn.

So far his feet had pierced into the night,

Such labors done had stamped out all return,

Such grim despair had cut him from his kind;

And in the narrow onward what should lie

More than the bare couch of a lonely grave,

Where never one of men should find the place?

Then leaped the arrow in the open wound:

"Go, if thou wilt, O following with the stars

That rose with thy creation—unbeloved,

Inglorious, though love and fame without

None finds the wholesome uses of his life;

He who forsaketh all, him all forsake—

And this thou feelest; now go mix with those

Who in the creature the Creator slight—