Page:The roamer and other poems (1920).djvu/19

⁠Ay me! but what avails to nurse the soul,
And will the better world, that heaven delays?
When hath it come? Soon gathered round his heart—
O, too familiar to this clouded breast—
Immortal dread, awe of the alien powers
In this dark sphere,—these vague infinities
Of matter round the solitude of mind
With menace, this dull crush of monstrous force
Crumbling the dense compàct, this far-strown world,
Abysmal being without mete or bound,
With endless shadows roved; whence thought, alarmed,
Strains in its orbit and its casing frame,
Ranges the vast, and calls from star to star,
With question of this cold eternity.
O striving Stress, O everlasting Might,
In every atom spawning energy
And cradling life in every blowing germ,
Storm of the world, swift drift and surge of time
That lifts the swimmer to the rushing flood
One moment's space, and thrusts him down to hell,

And rolls the next aloft, while, age on age,