Page:The roamer and other poems (1920).djvu/126

The small, bloom-windowed, sweet, ascetic cell,—
And took the staff of the world's pilgrimage,
Farewelled the stork's tower and the green-domed hill,
And by the poet's grave unclasped our hearts,—
How hast thou fared, brother, since then? we sought
The light divine." The other, smooth of brow,
High-featured, pale, large-eyed, answered, "I prayed
Among the mulberries at the road's steep end,
And with the staff of prayer journeyed thenceforth
In this life's wilderness; cities and schools
I threaded, unappeased, and fied, still young,
Into the desert of the boundless sands,
Eve's scarlet deep, and still night's hollow vault
Star-swarmed, where most the Omnipotent is nigh.
The heavens declare His glory, infinite power,
The wandering life His will, implacable fate.
There the Heaven-dweller, sole supreme, became
My habitation, and His works my world,—
Symbols of Him through whom alone they beam,
Best-known where shepherds watch their flocks by night
And see the upper deep, with angels thronged,
Hosannas sing,—so light from Him derived

Radiates through nature, which, His mirror, shines.