Page:The roamer and other poems (1920).djvu/51

Rh The passion spent, the corpse at last would fall.

And many a sign came whispering of the end;

All helplessly he felt the loosening life

Waver from sense and flutter from his will;

And, as o'er dying men comes fantasy

Of their own selves beside them waiting lone,

A phantom seemed to reach, with motions dark,

For pity and comfort in its solitude;

But he neglectful walked, remembering all

The passion and the loyalty of years.

The peaks sprang up behind; woods arched him in,

Umnindful, and on swards of grass, he came,

Nor knew he moved, and death was in his limbs.

Ah, yet once more, out of the dark obscure

Earth's wheel of torture heaved his soul aloft,

And Nature rallied for her last farewell.

Then was he 'ware of strange lights in the North—

Pale silver gleams on banks of emerald shone

Changeful, and now a drifting rose, and now

A thousand shadowy rainbows wavering;

And lone thereunder, laid by pine trees hoar,

He saw a youth, and broken in his hand

A reed of nature set with golden stops.

He drew more near where on the brown he lay,

And knelt, and took his head between his hands,