Page:The roamer and other poems (1920).djvu/130

The Roamer said; "God grant us so to live,
With others' lives commingling and involved
Until the larger self takes form in us
Whereby we rise to perfect charity,
One with mankind." "And dost thou live?"
Broke the low whisper hesitant from him
Who bore life's stigma; "more than mortal light
Clothes thy bright limbs, and even as one of us
Thou seemest discarnate, though to eye and ear
Thou art all human, as a mortal dream
Is figured thought." "Love held me in his grace
And from my birth I sleep upon his breast;
To learn of him is life"; the Roamer said:
"I go to learn, treading the pilgrim's way
Through lands I know not of. His will be done!"
And on the instant risen, he turned, and bade
God's peace be with them, and they heard amazed.
By flower and shrub the rough way wended on
Pathless, by rise and gully, brush, stone and sand,
And lost itself upon a stretch rock-pronged,
As 't were a place of graves, a bandit-hold.
The black stones in the brilliant sunlight stared,
Mysterious and forbidding, as by each
Some dark-browed danger lay, silent, concealed,
But none appeared; only the rank reed sighed,

And melancholy cast a shadow there