Page:Collected poems Robinson, Edwin Arlington.djvu/532

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RAHEL TO VARNHAGEN

That I had undergone the last and worstOf love's inventions. There was a boy who broughtThe sun with him and woke me up with it,And that was every morning; every nightI tried to dream of him, but never could,More than I might have seen in Adam's eyesTheir fond uncertainty when Eve beganThe play that all her tireless progenyAre not yet weary of. One scene of itWas brief, but was eternal while it lasted;And that was while I was the happiestOf an imaginary six or seven,Somewhere in history but not on earth,For whom the sky had shaken and let starsRain down like diamonds. Then there were clouds,And a sad end of diamonds; whereuponDespair came, like a blast that would have broughtTears to the eyes of all the bears in Finland,And love was done. That was how much I knew.Poor little wretch! I wonder where he isThis afternoon. Out of this rain, I hope.
At last, when I had seen so many daysDressed all alike, and in their marching order,Go by me that I would not always count them,One stopped—shattering the whole file of Time,Or so it seemed; and when I looked again,There was a man. He struck once with his eyes,And then there was a woman. I, who had comeTo wisdom, or to vision, or what you like,By the old hidden road that has no name,—I, who was used to seeing without flyingSo much that others fly from without seeing,Still looked, and was afraid, and looked again.And after that, when I had read the story

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