Page:The roamer and other poems (1920).djvu/73

But evil, that doth cling to all things here,
O'ercame that triumph. Yet, come all again,
I'll say it o'er; the dearest word of men,
The first to seal the poet's virgin vow,
The last to wing the patriot's breath to heaven,
Is Liberty; it hath the heart's touch in it,
The pang of sacred deaths, the onward reach
Of old heroic lives; O, richly charged—
With virtue's spoils and dear-prized honor heaped,
And ventures of such make their precious worth
Should purchase heaven, if any ransom's weight
Levelled the beam of that great counterpoise
With even scales aloft; but 't is not so.
In time's dark field must mortal valor fight
And with the viewless future cope on earth.
Yet the good cause plants virtue in the act;
'T is blessed; and so, and most through liberty,
The peopled earth is made the place of souls;
And sooner shall the little life of man
Cease to be heaven's prologue than his lips
Shall be untreasured of the word of grace
That chased them half-divine. Such thoughts were mine
Though captived-chained unto the Roman wall,

Where none but priests are free. O, them I curse,