42
THE ROAMER
And parted the fair hair from off his brows.
Upon his own dead face he seemed to look.
He could no more. He sank to earth. "Would God
Might press the sponge of death upon my lips,"
He murmured; and again by that far sea
He seemed to sit, again he died to light,
And on the burning darkness came the gloom,
Terrifically near, his soul's eclipse,
And in his ears faint rang the dying blast
Of Roland dead with all his chivalry;
Then Roland's dark breath seemed with his to mix,
Head laid to head, the heroic kiss of death;
"Non sono traditore," low he sighed;
And ere night sucked him downward, in that dusk,
Even as the flown soul to the body seems,
Borne on the drifting dark the past went by
Crying, and on its forehead was a star.
