Page:The roamer and other poems (1920).djvu/40

Who perished here at last,—some, trembling things,
Dropped from the talons of the heavenly bird,
Conscience, whose quarry is the gentle heart;
Some, blown by folly or haled on by crime;
Some, led by lights that seemed earth's morning stars,
Spirits of joyful trust, whom most he loved,
Forerunners of his hope; all darkly there,
Risen from the storm-bared rock where they had sunk,
With presages of woe, sad warning, stood;
And still the apprehensive heart of man,
That will not all obey, brooded within.
And long the Mocker warred, whom all men know,
To make illusion of his lonely trust,
And ill foreboding of his broken life,
And dark suggestion of the woe within;
Now he unrolled dead time's monotony,
The jester's scroll inscribed with golden tales
Of noble spirits in their ecstasy
Destroyed; and now he showed the peopled lands,
The world of men, the pity and the woe,
Shame, penury, crime, folly, and ill desire,
The faiths that were, and last the pallid Christ,