Page:The roamer and other poems (1920).djvu/74

64 From blue-veined Venice to white Naples' flush,

Where'er across the square of sun they creep

Through filth of beggars to Christ's open door!

The hearts unransomed by the love of man,

The lips that lie for power and pray for gain,

The practised brains that plot the baser age,

Hunters of liberty the thousand years!

They scourge the nations with the holy Cross,

And poison in the wine the Sacred Wounds,

And of our great Redemption bondage forge!

Where lingers vengeance? On, ye sleepless hours!

And Thou, whose long age over them yet rolls—

Harvest this curse among the quiet spheres!

I know not where they died who loved my song;

I cannot suffer; joy is in my heart,

Joy of the far-flown bird, the empty breast.

I go, but him they could not cage for death,

The bird whom I had sent to fly and sing

From snowy Alp to Etna's rosy cloud;

He nests within the heart of Italy."

"A great song is a deed forever doing;"

Reginald broke the happy idyl's close;

"No poet every truly tasted death;

Yet in the world that is," low fell his voice,

Whose thoughtful eye in long perspectives sphered

The world of action, "dead thy comrades are,