The roamer and other poems/The Roamer/Book IV

by George Edward Woodberry

 

THE ROAMER

Book IV

"O fair young face," a voice began aloof
When, dark, the Roamer woke, "how few there be
That pass this limit with such lips as thine,
An-hungered and athirst!" and nigh him rose
An old man's form against the doubtful sky.
Flowers of the desert held he in his hand,
Slight, grass-like spears that bore a bloom minute,
Whereof he seemed to proffer flower and stem.
"Take, eat," he said, "the food the waste provides."
The wondering Roamer pressed them to his lips,
And, scarce the leaf withdrawn, it seemed from thence
The very bloom and odor of the grape
Moved, flower and fragrance, in his racing blood,
And bore his soul aloft on vital tides.
"What faëry herb, what bright immortal root
Distils, like sap within the virgin bark,
Its rich elixir in this humble plant?
What desert realm? What hermitage?" He gazed
With longing toward those mighty solitudes
Arisen, where far he swept the breaking West.
O whence refreshed from unknown springs divine
The cry, the dark desire, the need to go
Whither the wild heart will? 'T was such a morn
As when in frosty autumns of the North
The honking geese cross the untraveled vague,
Unseen aloft, or heaven-high wedgewise move,
Wild birds in the void air; forward he saw
Where the wide world, westering with dune and butte
Sky-bordering, lifted on the rolling plains
A harsh, scant herbage of dull silvery leaf,
Flooring the solemn dawn. "The herb of grace"—
He heard the old man speak—"grows everywhere;
But sweetest, on the desert border found
And crushed, gives up its fragrant virtue here."
Then the awed Roamer swift bethought himself,
Replying, "Such tranquillity is thine,
So saintly bends toward earth thy age serene,
Scarce mortal thou, though mortal sounds thy voice."
"Mortal—immortal—they are veiling names
Of what is timeless," that old man returned;
"The mystic hours, whose revolutions flash
Shadow and sun upon the ways of men,
Can give no gifts but what they take away;
Yet aye abundant pours the living stream,
And all creation fleets through one fair form,
That in the moulding mind endures, divine
Reason, that passes not, nor on it falls
The shadow of dark death, nor any change
Of nature, and it grows not old with time.
It lights the mortal chamber of the soul.
There comes, as on a stage, the motley world;
There shine great truths, great actions, on one plane;
And all that is fills but a player's scene,
Where time is not, nor place; there, to the soul
The passing world, unfolding like a flower
From unseen roots, that shuts at eventide,
Is but a phantom-bloom and beauty's shade,
Echoing far off divine reality:
Such song the morning-stars together sang,
And at creation's birth praised light unseen."
Then in the Roamer stirred his dreaming youth:
"So once I sang with lifted hands to heaven
The beauty that the dawn hath never clasped,
The peace that falls not with eve's blessèd dew,
The mystery within the seas and stars;
All vision is the woven veil thereof;
There works the secret craft that builds the world;
There shines the ray that puts earth's glory on;
There wakes the chord that tunes the whirling sphere,
Amphion's art, heard in the rising deep,
And should it falter, heaven and earth were dark."
"Whence hast thou music, and the charm of words
Few speak and live?" the old man, thoughtful, said:
"Another dawn is shining in thy face."
Then, gladdening in his heart, the Roamer spoke;
"Love taught me this, whom mortal once I knew,
And felt upon my cheek his burning bloom.
O young, prophetic years! how long I live
With half my heart in the other world!" O'erhead
Morning was kindled in the lonely sky
A lonelier presence; as in Moslem lands,
Limned on the desert drifts and silentness,
Pilgrims to Mecca or to Kairouan
Seem waifs of nature, there he stood enskied
While the unclouded glory, pulsing on,
Beat up high heaven, and dipped with golden wing
The azure element, and made earth pure
With the celestial miracle of dawn.
"Whatever rapture fills that other world,
Build thou, ere night, thy earthly mansion fair,"
The old man said, and drew the Roamer on,
A little way, along the radiant rock,
Beyond the great Divide; its crown disclosed
Southward a canyon in the hollow hills,
Deep-sunken, o'er whose pink and yellow crags
Rose spires of tree-tops, rooted far below;
Sea-like, with heavenly straits, the distance shone
Far off, and melted into phantom lands,
Desert depressions, lost in filmy air.
"Yon is the gate, and narrow is the way,"
The old man, hastening, spoke; and from his lips
Dropped but few words, or none, as time were scant;
Till at the cleft arrived, "Descend," he bade,
"Only the desert hath reality.
Now on the border long I range denied.
So heavy-laden am I with the weight
Of earthly thought; the wisdom of the poor
Shall light thee onward to thy journey's end.
Blessèd art thou!" Dumbly he bowed his head;
As one abandoned, on the light he loomed;
And something in the old man's attitude
And gesture made the Roamer to refrain
His farewell word; he down the dark defile
Sank silent and his silence courtesy was.
⁠On the steep slope of an immense ravine
Profound, dividing upon either hand
Green ehasms of the valley canyon-walled,
He found himself; a moment yet he saw
The aspiring forests island the great gulf,
Primeval growths; soon in dark solitudes
He entered 'mid impenetrable shades,
By trunk and arch of nature's majesty,
The haunts of primal awe, man's earliest dread.
Ah, never had he felt such loneliness
Assail him, nor his soul so isolate
And lost in nature's vast, as in the hush
And shadow of that many-centuried wood!
It seemed coeval with creation's morn.
Monarchs of time stood there, like stem and limb
From Lebanon or Himalaya brought,
Hoar cedar, tall pines, dim sequoias huge
That still on earth salute the stars and winds
As equals, mixing with the heavenly roof;
So stood this forest grove majestical,
O'erblown with leafy flora of the vale,
In immemorial secular growth obscure.
The abode of unimaginable peace
Life seemed within the valley, and the soul
An alien in that natural paradise.
Sounding remote as reefs on unseen seas
He heard the long-drawn soughing of the pine
Begin, and die away down the dark trail
In the dense wild; there, brooding what should be,
He rounded pillared rocks, and found a shelf
Open and broad, the highway of the gorge.
So solitary was the solemn road,
So dark with loftiness of tree and rock,
Savage, austere, sublime, he scarcely saw
A form that passed, until it turned and looked
With unremembering eyes and face that seemed
The carven impress of a thousand years,
So was it typical and motionless.
Such brows upon the silent traveler gaze
From reaches of Egyptian colonnades,
Sphinxlike, unindividual, but man,
The immemorial creature of the earth;
Doubtful there shot a momentary gleam
Of recognition through him, as it passed;
And others, singly, up the gorge emerged
Out of the fire-scrawled rock and towering herb
In rare procession,—faces of mankind
That pass through generations, race-renewed;
Life piled on life had stamped their mortal mask;
Each gave him one long look, and disappeared;
And once a name had leapt unto his lips
And died in the vast silence, as in tombs;
But none accosted him out of that dark
Epitome of life, till all were gone;
And, weird of heart, he urged his counter-way
Unto the valley's outlet, and a land
That seemed an incantation in the morn,—
So instant broke the vast expanded scene
Of a far country, stretching to the West,
Into the infinite of sky and plain,
With black oases spotted, drifted gold,
A place of marvel; long he stood at gaze,
Before it silenced, and his heart was hushed.
Slowly he woke from that undreamt disclose
Of power, of vision, and of mystery.
Larger of soul, and drawing ampler breath,
And even with a silent joy inspired,
He sought the sheer descent, and winding down
By knife-edge ridges and dry torrent beds
Debouched below upon a fair demesne,
A tropic spot; an aged terebinth
Hung, half-reclined, above a sunken slab
Of marble, and a rose-bush blossomed nigh,
And in the shade two pilgrim forms reposed.
Eastern their garb, and dark their hue; they seemed
Companions, met by chance after long time,
Far travel, and in memories immersed;
He, unobserved, beside them drew, and sat.
"That day at Broussa whence our wanderings were,
When, boys, we left the mosque's bare, upper room,
The cradle of our youth," one of them said,
His face half-hid, "where life and prayer were all,—
The small, bloom-windowed, sweet, ascetic cell,—
And took the staff of the world's pilgrimage,
Farewelled the stork's tower and the green-domed hill,
And by the poet's grave unclasped our hearts,—
How hast thou fared, brother, since then? we sought
The light divine." The other, smooth of brow,
High-featured, pale, large-eyed, answered, "I prayed
Among the mulberries at the road's steep end,
And with the staff of prayer journeyed thenceforth
In this life's wilderness; cities and schools
I threaded, unappeased, and fied, still young,
Into the desert of the boundless sands,
Eve's scarlet deep, and still night's hollow vault
Star-swarmed, where most the Omnipotent is nigh.
The heavens declare His glory, infinite power,
The wandering life His will, implacable fate.
There the Heaven-dweller, sole supreme, became
My habitation, and His works my world,—
Symbols of Him through whom alone they beam,
Best-known where shepherds watch their flocks by night
And see the upper deep, with angels thronged,
Hosannas sing,—so light from Him derived
Radiates through nature, which, His mirror, shines.
Fain would I that such unity with Him,
Through awe and prayer, may at the last be mine,
As glorifies His humblest instruments!
Humblest is best. As lilies by the well
Drink of His loveliness, and fragrant blow,
Would that my mortal might put on His grace,
My raiment of the dust show gleams of Him,
My thoughts be incense burning in the flame
Of beauty that His omnipresence is,
My mind a spark of His omniscience!
So might my being—how blest!—transmit His rays,
And as the raindrop hangs the bow in heaven,
My finite manifest infinity!
Eternity informs this body of time,
The cosmic universe, in star and worm
The sacred hieroglyphic of His name:
All sight a means of seeing the Unseen,
All sense divine Transfiguration
Of Him, the Incommunicable." "Thought
Is but the shell of knowledge, as this world
Is but the shell of being," darkly said,
And low, his comrade, answering: "I have lived.
Though nature be the parable of Him,
He spoke not to me by the burning bush
Of beauty, nor the host that leads the morn.
I never found Him. Even from youth's first flower
Passion of life I knew, the quick fierce joys
Of action, and dull vintages of pain.
Ah, many a breast to me has night unsealed,
Scarred with dark writings of God's secrecy,
But most my own: dyed in the blood of man
Is all my knowledge; in the human flood
Deep was I dipped, and took the mortal stain.
Though sin be on my soul, woe in my heart,
So was I darkly mixed with all my race,—
One flame of life, one swift aspiring joy,
One body of delight, one weight of pain,
One spirit of man, One human, One divine."
"Whence hadst thou this?" The Roamer, venturing near,
Made him a third in that close company,
And drew upon himself a face of dream,
So spiritualized was the dark flesh,
With sorrows ploughed, and intimate with pain.
"Brother," the voice replied with courtesy,
"Such knowledge came not at the first,—I knew
The bittter taste of life, the solitude
Of evil, and the desert of myself.
Ah, long I lay in that abandonment,
Till one, a stranger youth, beside me crept
And bared his bosom; therein I beheld
The wingèd soul mired in its own sweet clay,—
Wild heart, wild head, and, in the tragic act
Itself revealed, high heaven beyond all reach,—
Body and soul, the image of myself,
As in a glass reflected and deformed,
Though in another birth: such had I been,
Such was, the mould and feature of despair;
And swift desire sprang flaming from my breast
To be his helper unto beauty lost.
I drew him to me, cherished him, and loved.
There God found me, even in the touch of hands
And hearts, that doubled the great universe,
Making us one; nor one with him alone
I had become, but wheresoe'er I went
And spoke unto the hearts of fellow-men
Though fallen and in desolate misery sunk,
There life in all made answer, ''T is thyself!'
It may be that God lives in star and flower
And others find Him there; but me He found
In my own heart, which is the heart of man."
"Allah il Allah! wonderful his works!"
Intoned the Moslem; but the Roamer hid
The words within his heart, and well he marked
The soft light dwelling in the other's eyes,
The ray of love, bright beaming, as he spoke.
"Life is the only comment on the heart
That speaks within us, eloquent of love,"
The Roamer said; "God grant us so to live,
With others' lives commingling and involved
Until the larger self takes form in us
Whereby we rise to perfect charity,
One with mankind." "And dost thou live?"
Broke the low whisper hesitant from him
Who bore life's stigma; "more than mortal light
Clothes thy bright limbs, and even as one of us
Thou seemest discarnate, though to eye and ear
Thou art all human, as a mortal dream
Is figured thought." "Love held me in his grace
And from my birth I sleep upon his breast;
To learn of him is life"; the Roamer said:
"I go to learn, treading the pilgrim's way
Through lands I know not of. His will be done!"
And on the instant risen, he turned, and bade
God's peace be with them, and they heard amazed.
⁠By flower and shrub the rough way wended on
Pathless, by rise and gully, brush, stone and sand,
And lost itself upon a stretch rock-pronged,
As 't were a place of graves, a bandit-hold.
The black stones in the brilliant sunlight stared,
Mysterious and forbidding, as by each
Some dark-browed danger lay, silent, concealed,
But none appeared; only the rank reed sighed,
And melancholy cast a shadow there
To ruins known, that crumble in the sun,
Shadowless, noiseless, lifeless, left of man
Unto the footing of forgotten years
And years to be forgotten; rubble and stone
Made difficult the way; but soon o'ercrost,
The dismal tract upon the level plain
Showed like a wave, black-crested, on the sea,
Horizon-high; now straight before rose up
What seemed a natural stone of antique rite,
A boulder rude; and, thither drawing close,
The Roamer heard one cry who stood erect
Beneath it, like a guardian of a gate,
And like a leveled spear his challenge was:
"What dost thou in this haunt of memory
Where I abide, alone of all my race,
Exiled from man?" The Roamer touched at heart,
Made answer, "Exile too am I;
A stranger from new lands and seas far off,
I seek the fair companions of my soul
Whom life to me denied, nor could I know
Their light and leading, nor their burden share.
I pray thee to receive me as a friend."
"A friend!" The sigh he drew echoed a woe
From long-past years beyond the reach of time,
And more the lover than the warrior showed
In his remembering eyes and wistful tones;
"One such I knew, and from my childhood's hour
He drew me with him, set my heart aflame
In boyhood, and unfolded my soul's flower,—
The passion for my race that in me grew,
And swelled my breast, and, full in youth, burst forth
The glory of my country's chivalry,
Rose of her garden, spearhead of her wars,—
O why recall? Why mourn? Why chronicle
The tears of time that every people knows,
Fulfilling destiny on fatal heights
Of high achievement to its last dismay?
I was the incarnation of the land;
I drank its life, I treasured up its soul;
I was made one with it, its voice, its deed,
Its hope, its triumph, its catastrophe.
Now blown about the desert world is all
My empire; and its breath, a memory,
Dies from the lips of time; and here I bide
'Mid scenes that are as ghosts of vanished years;
For, as at times men look on earth and sky,
And see lost recollections of a world
Once theirs, so fair, so dear, so intimate
They shine upon the eye and reach the heart,
Thus in the waste dominion round me strown
The immortal shadow of my own sweet land
Smiles from its ruins; on the rocky verge
The past gleams visionary; in the noon I see
Prone columns and huge capitals o'erthrown,
A tract of marble desolation piled,
Edged by the bright sea where I tasted death."
Even to the Roamer's self the landscape round,
As when the wind breathes on a field of wheat
And lifts the poppies, laughter of the spring,
Seemed by the dying gleam of time o'erswept;
An instant—such illusion is in words—
He saw the symbol of the mighty world
Fading away, lost, recordless, annulled;
Then, waking from the momentary trance
And shadowy seizure dim, he knew himself;
Bright o'er him soared the sweet, eternal sky,
The home and eyrie of the bird of time
Forever,—"O calm, ageless blue," he cried,
Our house of life and temple of our faith,
What destinies unroll in thee agelong!"
He turned unto the desert prince, inspired:
"Fortunate is he born who lifts his land
Up to the heights of greatness, his bright death
Immortal, in its glory who expires!
He has advanced the world, whate'er his day,
And on his shoulders borne the orb of fate
Up the steep slopes of time unto God's feet.
Nation to nation calls, race unto race,
Englobing and dissolving, bodied o'er
In larger units, nearer to our goal,
The incarnation of humanity.
I cannot cease from belief in the To-Come,
The top and crown of worship of the past;
For I was bred in reverence of the great
Fathers of men, who gave their names to tribes,
Cities and lands, and are their memory,—
Founders of states, though state and land be lost,
Sires of mankind, and saviours, though they die."
"Where are my soldier-mates?" the chieftain cried,
"Brothers-in-arms, my children in the fight,
My battle-brood,—young, golden eagle-brood—
That drank the morning as the wine-cup, flung
The rose of youth into the face of death,
And rang the laughter of the sword above
The waves of onset, as they sank to night
Down the dark depths of the To-Come?" He paused,—
"The sun shall come again, the spring return;
Cities shall rise and fall, dominions fade;
And death be swallowed up in victory.
Time is the victor, and he mindeth not
The sacrifice. Both king and kingdom die."
"Kingdom and king are interlocked by fate,
And no hand breaks that bond through endless time,"
Returned the Roamer: "Thou hast proved it well,
Prompted within by the undying spark.
The individual and the mass are one.
In my own youth I caught the sacred lore,
In a far country that thou knowest not of;
There lies my land, a seat of growing good,
A seedplace of the nations, storing time,
A harvest of the universal earth,
A power whereof the armament is peace,
A state proceeding from all wills made one,
A realm where all men reign, a commonwealth,
A stronghold of mankind; there all men toil,
And wisdom labors on the shield of truth,
And on the stammering lips of knowledge shapes
New ages rising, and prophetic hears
The pæan of the final victory."
As signal fire to signal fire is flashed
Across dividing seas, the young prince heard
And kindled, and as light revisits late
A sunset peak with the sweet rose of eve
After the sun is gone, and soon dies off,—
Touched with that message of the dawn, he flushed
And faded, to his own dark self withdrawn
And silent mystery; reverence he made
To the rude altar. "Peace go with you, friend,"
He said, "who bringest gentle tidings here
Of unknown scriptures in the book of time!
Fair be your journey, sweet your last repose!"
And, as if fascinated, saw him go
O'er the bright sand, as at the spirit's call.
⁠Wonderful was the scene through which then moved
The Roamer, compassed by horizons free,
By high clouds hung, and swept by sunburst lights
That traveled the vast round—a virgin world,
Still shining from the great Creator's hand,
Fresh from the infinite that yet abode
In all its features; sky and wind and sun
The impress of the eternal presence bore
Wherefrom it issued, clothed in light and life,
From the foundation of the world prepared
The soul's wide mansion; awe illimitable
Of power, unsensed but felt, upon him stole
From the great scene, dune rolling beyond dune;
And like a solitary bark at sea
Far out from land, he seemed unto himself;
And, imaged in his breast, the solemn sight
Filled his lone thought, and fashioned forth his words.
"What signify," he said, "cerulean walls,
The towering clouds, the long-drawn mountain-lines,
The painted plains, the luxury of light,
The expense of power and beauty's ornament,
The glow and sculpture of the dædal earth
Along the roadside, where by nations crawls
The caravan of time? O traitor world!
Thou art the inn of poverty and crime,
The warren of the poor wherein they breed
Hunger and cold, passion and woe, and death
In perpetuity. Kingdoms and states
Are but the shining surface of the flood,
Time's phosphorescence; deep below dips down
The unrecorded misery of the mass,
Creation's underworld. What is 't to men,—
The glamour of great ages yet to be
Wherein they shall not share? or glory gone,
A nameless epitaph?" On the last rise
The landscape sank beneath him, desert-wild,
White valleys of the chotts,—a far-strown world
Of endless desolation, chequered tracts,
Spotted with salty crusts, dim palms and wastes,
Interminable dearth; and in the way
Two, robed in white and worn with travel stains,
Girt with the knotted cord, scanned the strange sight;
Them soon he overtook with noiseless steps.
"Of such a land the holy father told,
Who bade me follow him," the younger said,
"A place of ruin and old chaos stilled,
As on the moon an earthly visitant
Might gaze on planetary death around,—
The ribbed sea bottom from its base uptorn,
Volcanic holocausts of shattered hills
And sandy oceans blown by warring storms,"
And, startled, he beheld the Roamer nigh,
And blessed him coming: "Peace abide with thee,
Who enterest these dead lands inhospitable!"
He said, upon the Roamer's face intent.
"How is thy countenance fair!" abrupt he spoke,
As to himself. "Welcome I seek," replied
The Roamer, "who have nought to give in turn;"
And humble stood, as one who begs a boon.
"True poverty is all our riches here,"
The elder answered: "love is all our wealth
For many a league foregone, love all our alms
Given or received,—God's love." "Tell me of love,"
Struck by a sudden radiance divine,
The Roamer said, devout,—and, on bright sands
As on the threshold of a world to come
Reposing, harkened, as to one in dreams,
The wisdom of the desert, golden-mouthed.
"Love drew my youth from the sweet soil of France,"
Sorrows of exile toned the mellow voice
That first had spoken; "tender yet my age,
Called by strange gospels of the silent heart
That beats in all men—so the Master said—
And ever hears a spiritual voice
Amid the worldly strife; that voice I heard,
Brooding above the Master's sacred charge,
Who, laying his thin hands upon my youth,
Thus vowed my life to lowliest ministries:
'To have no name; to touch no gold; to own
City nor country where to lay thy head;
To wander through the world, the friend of him
Who has no friend, easing the daily weight
Of this so bitter life; to brother all,
But bind no dear companion to thy side
Save to divide his burden; not to think
Of earthly recompense nor heaven's reward;
To hope no gain; to fear no loss; but live,
Free from the mortal tangle of the self,
For others only, humbly so to serve
Among the humble; nor make state nor race
A barrier to the soul; but give thy love
No bound, no limit; so the mighty heart
Of the whole world shall beat against thy side,
Great with the flooding passion of mankind
To make one kindred of all human bloods,
One living soul.'" He paused, as if o'erawed
By his own mounting thoughts and visioned sight,
Conscious anew of the evangel winged
Of his great Order: then impassioned rose
The Faith Triumphant, breathing upon lips
That sang its martyrs: "Orphan though he be,
He liveth best who giveth up his life
To live incorporate in other men.
Blessèd is he who hath forsaken all
To lose himself within the larger world
Of indivisible humanity.
A million hearts shall be his earthly home,
And silent bosoms store his virtue up,
Unknown and unsuspected; it shall grow,
Ripen, and multiply the good of God,
And bring the slow millennial harvests on
To clothe the world." How salt the desert gleamed
In the bright sun resplendent, whereon fell
The Roamer's gaze! The other, in quick turn,
As if antiphonal to that high strain,
Took up the Word: "Abandoned and deprived,
He is most rich who, vowed to poverty,
Hath nothing to receive and all to give;
And who beholds him learns the works of love.
Love is the bread that feeds the multitudes;
Love is the healing of the hospitals;
Love is the light that breaks through prison doors;
Love knows not rich nor poor, nor good nor bad,
But only the beloved, in every heart
One and the same, the incorruptible
Spirit divine, whose tabernacle is life.
Love, more than hunger, feeds the soul's desire;
Love more the spirit than the body heals;
Love is a star unto the darkened mind;
And they who truly are Love's servants leal,
And follow him, undoubting, to the end,
Beyond the bounds of human righteousness,
Past Justice and past Mercy, find at last,
Past Charity, past Pardon, Love enthroned,
Lord of all hearts, incarnate in man's soul."
Like silence after music fell the close
Of the Word singing in the wilderness
That lay so brightly calm, so weirdly still.
The landscape, glittering like a serpent's eye,
Hypnotic glared, and dumb the Roamer's heart
With all his life went echoing, like a shell
That holds, within, its melodies concealed.
"All these things have I heard from my youth up,"
He broke the spell, "taught by the bards divine.
I do remember my dear Master said,
'To him who knows what love is, love is all';
And on my ring I bear the blessèd words,
'Love is but one thing with the gentle heart.'
Lo! on my hand the golden circle bound!
Sweet is the gospel of the gentle heart,
Wherewith I travel." On the little ring
Centred their eyes. "What talisman hast thou,
That holds thee safe 'gainst disarraying death,
Where most his empire rules? The living word
Is yet the burden of thy breath!" they cried,
Together risen, awe-struck. "Love is my lord,
And in his charge I go," the Roamer said;
"Pray for my peace!" "Thy faith companion thee!"
He heard behind him; and the burning sands
Received him, the deep silence, and the sky.
⁠Far on one hand he left the blanchèd lands
Of the death valley, hollow and malign,
That rolled its lost horizons to the South.
Westward he trailed the rock-bound desert route,
Where narrowest, like a gulf, the great chott ran,
And crossed it, and on level reaches came,
Steeped in the sun, lapped by the bathing blue,
The kingdom of the sands; no life was there,
But shadowless, majestic, nature's power
Moulded her image of the earth and sky,
Where man was not; only the white sand-sea
Lifted its crests, and rolled its arrowy drifts
Frozen in the act of motion, and clomb up
Rare buried palm-clumps, islanding the waste.
How still it was! the elemental world
In its own universe! as from the first,
Before man was, it filled creation's dawn!
The Roamer felt himself a stranger there
As in another world, an older star,
'Mid heavens bright, unknown; and, as he moved
Across that panorama without end,
Sterile and clear, the soft, transparent air
Evoked far objects, the blue glow intense
O'ercanopied the sands, and imprecise
The lines of all things wavered; and, behold!
As when a sailor, cast up by the sea,
Upon an alien coast, in a far land,
Wanders 'mid rocks and hills, and from some cliff
Sees a green valley smile, at half a league,
He saw, nor far, a quiet water set
By scattered palm trees, like a silver streak,
And o'er the placid bank their tall stems leaned.
How firm they cut the insubstantial air,
Like some fair island, seen by barren seas,
Aloof, indifferent to human life,
Still as a vision in a charmèd dream,
Beauty dissevered from reality!
"Mirage!" the Roamer murmured 'neath his breath;
And long it clung unto his patient eyes,
Remembering other days and visions gone
That yet within his mind were luminous,
Though never on the earth their sweet light fell.
"Illusion! how dost thou companion me,
Me, the Truth-Seeker!" scarce he spoke aloud.
"Art thou, O Dream, its only mortal mould?
For I was born a dreamer, and fair things
Wove mystery in my eyes; beauty o'erflowed
With spirit, and with emanating forms
Peopled my morning world; oft to my side,
With welcome in their silent eyes divine,
Companionable the young gods came; and, most,
Love stood beside me, gazing eagerly,
And took my hand, and sealed my lips with fire
That in my body burns immortally.
Formless and plastic, like a cloud in heaven
That drinks the sun, earth felt my dawning soul
Glow in that morn, and mould her elements;
And many a shape, body of my desire,
Flushed with sweet light, and faded; and Love smiled.
Birth after birth to fairer beauty flew;
Form after form unclothed in nobler grace;
And all my rapture was a long farewell,
Flight following flight of sweet creations gone;
And, last, Love left my side without a guard.
Mirage! Mirage!" he sighed; "look, where it pales!"
And, in an instant, bare the wide sands rolled;
And faintness came upon him, like a cloud,
A momentary shadow; nigh, the West
Broke into little hillocks, as he passed,
And quickly grew, like surges of the sea,
To crests and valleys, hollows of the wind,
Drifted and ridged, as is the driven snow,
With fret and furrow; and he rose amidst
White, mobile mounds, carved by the inconstant breeeze
Unheeded, sculptured like the living hills,—
Wild beauty: and his heart grew prescient,
Ere he beheld him, of a comrade there,
Who moved toward him from the sinking sun.
The loveliness of youth was in his limbs,
And on the Roamer turned his friendly eyes
Love-lit; a round shield dangled on his arm;
By following I lead was its device;
His mien was courtly as of long-past time.
"Chrestoval was I christened at the font,"
He said, "the page of Christ and soldier, vowed
To bear his Cross, to wear his sacred sword,
Storied with causes lost and fallen arms
Of my companions dead; I know thee mine,
Who comest to thy own in the great waste."
As when the leader of the hope forlorn—
Or win or lose, his victory is secure—
Looks to the setting sun, on the last day,
And smiles to see his liegemen round him strown,—
So sweet and stern the closing of his lips,
The haunted eyes, that seemed to gaze far off
On things unseen, and saw beyond all sight
The heavenly passes; on that mystic face
The Roamer hung intent,—the mouth that seemed
To sweeten with the words before they came;
"In the heart only is the victory cried,"
He heard, amid the silence of the sands
Sounding, "and in the soul its sweetness found."
And yet a second time the faintness came
Upon him, and the momentary dark;
And when again the white hills round him stood
Clear, with a strange distinctness he beheld
How delicate the fingers of the wind,
The framing of the sandhills how sublime!
He lay by Chrestoval who o'er him bent
Between the sun and shadow; him he guessed
One of the comrades of his youth divine,
The great companions leagued, though only given
One to another by the eyes of faith.
"Comrade," he murmured, "is it thou, indeed?
Yet in the very flower of thy sweet age,
Who bringest the light of unknown loveliness?"
"But not to thee unknown, or any man
Who seeks the beam of beauty in the soul,"
Came the quick answer: "beauty there shines most
And charms men's bosoms; and, implanting thus
The seeds of awful reverence and desire,
Frees the soul's nature; it hath precious friends;
There virtue comes, and mirrors in her shield
Sweet images of virgin purity
In the heavenly mind; there godlike patience bends
The spirit of man to its unending task,
And courage feedeth it with deathless fire;
And hope, the common breath of all men's days,
Lifts over it the universal sky;
Last, honor, the best earthly friend that Love
Warms in his breast, hath in the soul itself
A sacred chapel, pure, inviolable,
Where the young spirit watches till his doom
Comes on him, and he passes to the field,
Where only Love, our lord, is sovereign;
He takes the fair soul into his embrace,
And speeds him to the combat glorious,
Whose prize is noble death." "Love long I knew,"
The Roamer said—what tears were in his voice!—
"Since first my tender years felt the embrace
Of his enlacing arms, warm round me thrown,
And in his face saw beautiful the soul.
Now my sad thoughts adore him, long unseen,
Who in my heart lodges his deity.
Immortal Love! he taught my joyful youth
The yearning of the spirit infinite
For the long kiss of life, whate'er its pain;
And, gladdening in his face invisible,
I do his will, and on his errands go.
Night comes; and I am fain of voice and hand,
The smile, the word, the look, the sight of him,
My morning star." The darkening shadows fell
About them in the lone and silent hills
By sunset fired. "Love," answered the fair youth,
"The more he lives, the more lays off life's weeds,
And in another world he is divine.
But here he wanders in his childhood fond
A beggar, and he clothes himself with gifts,
The fairest in the world; and flowers, whereof
He brought within his breast the heavenly seed,
Here germinate; and beautiful he shows
In every outward part; but lovelier far
He is, when he puts on his manly age,
And inward graces in his fair face beam.
All beauty burns in his sweet passioning,
And echoes to the spirit of desire
That there stands tiptoe; by his minstrelsy
He makes the world one song; but soon he hears
A discord growing on the lyre; he sees
A phantom in the sunshine, in the spring
The rose unblown within the cankered bud;
The dying bird drops songless at his feet;
And all things lack fulfillment; all too soon
The heavens cloud up, strange shadows fill the scene,
And the soul darkens in its mortal cell,
And beats its prison; then, all joyance gone,
Love only hears the clanking of life's chain,
Revolts, despairs, frenzies and wild appeals,
The tragedy of man. How is Love changed,
So flames in him the passion beautiful!
He hath become the brother of the poor,
The twin of bitter want, the mate of pain;
Dearer the victim is, the more he falls;
Then, far beyond the good and evil gone,
Love hath transcended the vain shows of life;
And all his wisdom is the spirit elate,
Selfless, devoted, given to its own,
As if he stood by heaven's open gates
And showed the shining pathway up to light;
And such communion hath he in that hour
With human hearts wherein he entereth,
That if into thy bosom he shall creep,
So strange a joy shall pass into thy flesh,
As if himself were seated in thy breast.
Then shalt thou shake with the first throb of love
That knows what love is; love is sacrifice
Of all that love holds dear unto itself,
Even to the extinction of its hopes, its life,
So that its object live, complete and fair,
Its nature out to its own loveliness
Of act and being." "Thou hast told my tale,
As if myself had emptied all my heart,"
The Roamer said; and over them swift night
Came in the striding shadow of eclipse
Upon the desert sands. "The light? the light?"
The Roamer said; "the light divine?" "The light?"
Came the grave answer, "from thyself it flows;"
And, in the dark, a soft, dull radiance,
Such as in Italy the glow-worm sheds
On the green leaf, or the dim fireflies flash,
By thousands glimmering in the darkened fields,
Stole gleaming o'er his form, his feet, his hands;
With tremors coursed, he on his left arm propped
Rose kneeling, and within he was aware
Of a great passion, mounting like a sea,
And breaking; and the mystery flooded him
Of a communion unimaginable,
That, interpenetrating flesh and bone,
Vibrated in the motion of his blood
And shook him, darkening wave on darkening wave
Of deep emotion pure; ineffable
The seizure; and the ghostly hills of night
Whitened around him; high in heaven came
A rush of stars in the wide universe;
And Chrestoval stood o'er him; his last look
Clung to that silent face, immovable,
Strange, yet familiar, beautiful, supreme.
Then, upon running waves of darkness borne,
Sank his dear head, and from his mortal sight,
With all that he inherited of earth,
It faded; as one day this world shall melt
And vanish in the passing of the soul.