Page:The roamer and other poems (1920).djvu/17

Vast broods of earth-might round about us drawn;
And straight I heard the challenge of old fame,
And in my bosom leaped the maiden heart,
And he, beside me, like my spirit shone.
Then oft between the pine-ridge and the sea
I saw him, guarded round with solitude,
In meditation lost and deeds of dream,
The poet's frailty, nursing his sweet age
On great achievement that eternal rings,
And fame to be; what was, heroic done—
Man's graven record, or the poet's breath—
He was the doer in his fantasy;
And what yet waits its passage to the stars,
In the dark underworld and womb of time,
For which a race in pain doth weary heaven,
Smiling he stood in that unrisen morn
And lined it with his glory; so he burned
In that long passion of my youth begun,
From him beginning—dark the issue is—
And what was hope in him, in me was fate.
So sweet in memory shines his fair young face,
That still to see youth's sweetness gives me pain,
Remembering all that heaven had fixed for him
To do and suffer, though at first he seemed
Not to inhabit here, or wear our earth;