Page:Collected poems Robinson, Edwin Arlington.djvu/527

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COLLECTED POEMS

Somewhere within there were dim presencesOf days that hovered and of years gone by.I waited, and between their silencesThere was an evanescent faded noise;And though a child, I knew it was the voiceOf one whose occupation was to die.

DISCOVERY

We told of him as one who should have soaredAnd seen for us the devastating lightWhereof there is not either day or night,And shared with us the glamour of the WordThat fell once upon Amos to recordFor men at ease in Zion, when the sightOf ills obscured aggrieved him and the mightOf Hamath was a warning of the Lord.
Assured somehow that he would make us wise,Our pleasure was to wait; and our surpriseWas hard when we confessed the dry returnOf his regret. For we were still to learnThat earth has not a school where we may goFor wisdom, or for more than we may know.

FIRELIGHT

Ten years together without yet a cloud,They seek each other's eyes at intervalsOf gratefulness to firelight and four wallsFor love's obliteration of the crowd.Serenely and perennially endowedAnd bowered as few may be, their joy recalls

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