Page:The roamer and other poems (1920).djvu/64

54 And shake, an earthquake, underneath his towers,

And belch on city and plain volcanic fire,

Stoop in fierce lightnings, swarm in pestilence!

And he whose coming was the dawn divine,

The child in whom the morning cannot die,

Where shall he turn? what harbor, what escape?

O'erwhelmed within by fate he never forged,

The victim of primeval woe and wrong,

The sinful burden of all time his load,

'No child of hope thou art,' from all things here

Loud Nature thunders; 'the Destroyer thou,

The last and mightiest wielder of the curse,

Whose dark assault, disdaining mortal wreck,

On the eternal soul now plants the wound.'"

Then spoke the Roamer, lifting equal eyes,

Who could not stem that breathless eloquence:

"Deep is the mystery of our birth divine,

The fire from heaven that seizes on this clay

And moulds it to the spirit of a man;

Deeper the earth-taint and its mystery,

From what dark root its strong corruption grows

To eat into the soul's line element.

justice nor mercy never Nature knew;

Yet man she bore; and, howsoe'er he sin,

Justice and mercy to his heart are known;

And some, whose names are my idolatry,