Chapter V

I think thou must have wandered far
With Spring for guide,
And heard the shy-born forest flowers
Talk to the wind among the showers,
Through sudden doorways left ajar
When the wind sighed;

Thou must have heard the marching sweep
Of blown white rain
Go volleying up the icy kills,--
And watched with Summer when the hills
Muttered of freedom in their sleep
And slept again.

Surely thou wert a lonely one,
Gentle and wild;
And the round sun delayed for thee
In the red moorlands by the sea,
When Tyrian Autumn lured thee on,
A wistful child,

To rove the tranquil, vacant year,
From dale to dale;
And the great Mother took thy face
Between her hands for one long gaze,
And bade thee follow without fear
The endless trail.

And thy clear spirit, half forlorn,
Seeking its own,
Dwelt with the nomad tents of rain,
Marched with the gold-red ranks of grain,
Or ranged the frontiers of the morn,
And was alone.

VI

One brief perturbed and glorious day!
How couldst thou learn
The quiet of the forest sun,
Where the dark, whispering rivers run
The journey that hath no delay
And no return?

And yet within thee flamed and sang
The dauntless heart,
Knowing all passion and the pain
On man’s imperious disdain,
Since God’s great part in thee gave pang
To earth’s frail part.

It held the voices of the hills
Deep in its core;
The wandering shadows of the sea
Called to it,--would not let it be;
The harvest of those barren rills
Was in its store.

Thine was a love that strives and calls
Outcast from home,
Burning to free the soul of man
With some new life. How strange, a ban
Should set thy sleep beneath the walls
Of changeless Rome!