Page:The roamer and other poems (1920).djvu/95

But here, the soaring soul on outstretched wings
Bears up the precious burden of all hope
Through dim and starry deeps, the charge of heaven.
How wan it grows, and waxes gray with time!
Beauty and glory die, and love hath end;
Mary and Magdalen are made one dust;
And all things turn to phantoms, fade, and cease.
Only a little while those glories stand
That rose unto eternal memory.
Great kings, dead emperors, in trance and dream,
Augustan shapes, grave, beautiful, divine,
Each in his shroud of empire as he lived,
Revisit my old eyes, that see no more
Immortal things!" Reëntering in himself,
He vanished, and the breast of the Unknown
Received him unto his eternal place.
A voice rang out, far-distant: "Where are they,
Whose names sound vaguely on this hollow air,
The fiery Intercessors, once proclaimed?
I served them; for they sent me in my youth
Visions that lit the sunlight; the thin dawn
Was thronged with angels bearing trophied palms
Toward a great light, far rising in the East;
All flowers breathed incense round me up to heaven;
The thoughts of men passed o'er me, shining flights;

And many a nation then grew great of soul,