Page:The roamer and other poems (1920).djvu/141

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,