Page:The roamer and other poems (1920).djvu/24

With caverned vale on vale, the vast defile
Leapt up night's core; and like a man who shakes
With hope of what he fears, he saw, far off,
The darkness, gathering up from the wide world
In his forecasting heart, take awful shape
Upon the burning glare; terrific gloom
Stood on the mountains, black with dragon-coils,—
The vision that he dreamed, the hope he dared,
Since from the angelic flight of innocent years
There stooped and touched his lips such rosy flame
That God's might in him cannot ever die.
O, how he kindled at the very foe
Made instant visible! the fabled place,
Whose horror crests the lone eternal steep,
The goal of lost adventure, goal and grave!
There, by the slope, and worming o'er the edge,
The narrow track of noble peril ran;
And, thinly springing, many a lonely sheaf
Of beamy blades and starry-dipping points
Flashed back the battle of the dying world.
He saw—he sprang—he heard the challenge peal,
Caught like the mighty blast of Roland dead
Far-blown from standards of the fallen Christ;

And light o'erllowed within him, light long sought,