Page:The roamer and other poems (1920).djvu/85

Rh But on, O loitering Song, nor, all too fond,

Gaze on the key, when thou shouldst ope the door!

The realms through which thou goest no pæan love.

Let none misdoubt, nor this strong record weigh

O'erlightly! little heart have I to feign:

The hand writes only what the eye beheld.

Here, too, was salutation; song was here,

Breathed from a pipe by one beneath a pine,

So fair the Roamer never heard the notes,

Nor knew what happy pause his presence filled.

"Welcome!" he heard, "not to eternal things!

No longer the divine encounter hope!

Here learn thou yet art mortal in the mind!"

"Mortal in all," he answered, "still heaven's ray

Strikes through the precious oriel of the eye

Upon my spirit." Risen, long gazed at him

That one whose impulse the wise reason checked.

"Is god-sprung vigor in thy bones infused

That melt not in this air? thou seemest man,

Still beautiful to each fine nerve of sense,

As thou wouldst be, wert thou and I alive."

"Mortal I am," returned he; "still undoomed,

My brief years yet await their manly deeds;

Across the spectral moor I come to you."

As 't were his soul's command, he bent his gaze

Who first had spoken. "Hath mortality