Page:The roamer and other poems (1920).djvu/124

Open and broad, the highway of the gorge.
So solitary was the solemn road,
So dark with loftiness of tree and rock,
Savage, austere, sublime, he scarcely saw
A form that passed, until it turned and looked
With unremembering eyes and face that seemed
The carven impress of a thousand years,
So was it typical and motionless.
Such brows upon the silent traveler gaze
From reaches of Egyptian colonnades,
Sphinxlike, unindividual, but man,
The immemorial creature of the earth;
Doubtful there shot a momentary gleam
Of recognition through him, as it passed;
And others, singly, up the gorge emerged
Out of the fire-scrawled rock and towering herb
In rare procession,—faces of mankind
That pass through generations, race-renewed;
Life piled on life had stamped their mortal mask;
Each gave him one long look, and disappeared;
And once a name had leapt unto his lips
And died in the vast silence, as in tombs;
But none accosted him out of that dark
Epitome of life, till all were gone;
And, weird of heart, he urged his counter-way

Unto the valley's outlet, and a land