Page:Collected poems Robinson, Edwin Arlington.djvu/531

This page needs to be proofread.

COLLECTED POEMS

Do you not hear it said for your salvation,When I say truth? Are you, at four and twenty,So little deceived in us that you interpretThe humor of a woman to be noticedAs her choice between you and Acheron?Are you so unscathed yet as to inferThat if a woman worries when a man,Or a man-child, has wet shoes on his feetShe may as well commemorate with ashesThe last eclipse of her tranquillity?If you look up at me and blink again,I shall not have to make you tell me liesTo know the letters you have not been readingI see now that I may have had for nothingA most unpleasant shivering in my conscienceWhen I laid open for your contemplationThe wealth of my worn casket. If I did,The fault was not yours wholly. Search againThis wreckage we may call for sport a face,And you may chance upon the price of havocThat I have paid for a few sorry stonesThat shine and have no light—yet once were stars,And sparkled on a crown. Little and weakThey seem; and they are cold, I fear, for you.But they that once were fire for me may notBe cold again for me until I die;And only God knows if they may be then.There is a love that ceases to be loveIn being ourselves.How, then, are we to lose it?You that are sure that you know everythingThere is to know of love, answer me that.Well? . . . You are not even interested.
Once on a far off time when I was young,I felt with your assurance, and all through me,

514

This article is issued from Wikisource. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.