Page:The roamer and other poems (1920).djvu/96

86 Whose names, heard in my brain, bred mighty forms,

Like tall angelic spirits of the spheres

On balanced planets rushing, fiery orbs;

Athene, Rome, Albion, America

Whirled forward, kindling time. How should man fail?

And ever from the deep sprang destiny,

And to fresh ages gave another morn.

I served because I believed,—a single man

Among the phantom nations. Long I believed;

For when I brooded once the wrack of time,

A fire arose within my living bones,

And rapt me, prophet-wise, out of that flesh

Which yet engarbs my thought, models my words,

Into the thoughtless, wordless infinite,

Where truth abides; great radiance entered in

The temple of my being, that shook and flamed

With silent thunders of another world,

Heard in the soul,—and, heard, they died away;

And often, gazing on a fragile flower,

Or little acts of mute, unconscious love,

Or listening to dim stories of old wars,

I grew aware of some transcendent sphere,

Of which these were the brief, decaying forms;

And, grown a man, seized in the mystic sweep

Of that which comes and goes without a name,