Page:The roamer and other poems (1920).djvu/49

Rh The torch-race of the ever-dying gods,

Orb after orb of throneless deity;

And spectral o'er him broke in that frore air

The burnt-out hopes, and ghosts of prophecy,

That once from holy hearts rose charioted,

And in the zenith hung their mighty faiths,—

Visions of old, by every mastering race,

Set in the blazing zodiac of time;

The fiery pillar that brought Israel forth

Rose like an exhalation; flaming stood

The Cross that went before imperial Rome;

Pale swam the moon of Islam dropping blood;

And out they flickered, brief as shooting stars;

Then dark the slow recovery of his sight,

Weary of all that never ceasing death,

Saw Lethe roll against a purple dawn,

Weird as by breadths of watery gloom far North

The sun at midnight sheds unearthly morn;

Saw still Avilion on the unoared lake,

Dim, dusky, fragile, like a flower of night

Half-open to the white and slumbrous moon;—

"Peace, if not hope; death, if not life; calm death

That of the grave keeps but tranquillity,"

He murmured—snatches of remembered prayer;

"Not mine, no longer mine, no more," he mused;

"O, for Thy service build Thy Strength in me