Page:The roamer and other poems (1920).djvu/89

Rh Color and light and shade, figure and size,

In due proportion and perspective true;

For choice creative, mingling with the sense,

Taught his rich eye, by habit in it grown,

To look on nature, and to add the stamp

And earthly impress of the gazing soul;

So ever in the world another world

Rose fairer, by a mightier order moved;

Nature, instinctive, owned the sovereign mind,

That bound all things in its own motion fast,

Unconscious, as the dreamer fills his dream.

The heavenly faculty within him wrought,

And as from chaos drew the lovely scenes,

And hung them in the porches of the dawn.

Such power of evocation oft he used,

His birthright, in far other days than these,

And other lands, where yet on rock and bough

The robe of autumn casts its fiery edge,

Ruddying the pine-grown amphitheatre,

And in the ample distance fade away

Masses of golden woodland o'er the fields;

Or where, long hours, the misty, climbing spring

Wreathes lake and forest, thicket and point and isle,

Yellowing and reddening, and the tender green

Loops hill to hill, and with the sudden bloom

Of warm May days the horizon dapples round.