Page:The roamer and other poems (1920).djvu/143

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,