Page:The roamer and other poems (1920).djvu/48

38 And ruin with what saves, if aught!" He turned

Into the dark beneath the great stone brows;

"O fertile Falsehood! fool, to think him known

Who draws his cordon round the mount of time

And singly doth beleaguer the whole world

That there sits perched! races and states opposed,

And God's alliance! yet each poor soul doth press

As it were all his war! drop not thy fence,

Nor think thyself secure though angels guard;

Keep watch with all thy gates; within be stern!"

Once more he taught his spirit to endure

The rugged track; o'er crevice and high ravine

Great huddled peaks and ridges bulked in air,—

Rivers of ice, vast copes of ageless frost,

With glittering bergs and thin crevasses hoar,

The waste eternal winter; loft on loft,

The rolling snow-field whitened the great skies;

Now nigh to heaven he rose and prospects broad,

Out of the silent valleys drifting death,

On great plateaus that should command the world;

And ever where the far horizons flung

Round him with mightier folds the starry robe,

He read the man-myth on the shining hem,—

Iràn, Chaldæa, Egypt,—and more late,

Divinely springing from the Olympian mount,