Page:Collected poems Robinson, Edwin Arlington.djvu/64

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THE BURNING BOOK

And like a giant harp that hums On always, and is always blending The coming of what never comes With what has past and had an ending, The City trembles, throbs, and pounds Outside, and through a thousand sounds The small intolerable drums Of Time are like slow drops descending.
Bereft enough to shame a sage And given little to long sighing, With no illusion to assuage The lonely changelessness of dying, Unsought, unthought-of, and unheard, She sings and watches like a bird, Safe in a comfortable cage From which there will be no more flying.

THE BURNING BOOK

OR THE CONTENTED METAPHYSICIAN

To the lore of no manner of men
Would his vision have yielded
When he found what will never again
From his vision be shielded,—
Though he paid with as much of his life
As a nun could have given,
And to-night would have been as a knife,
Devil-drawn, devil-driven.

For to-night, with his flame-weary eyes
On the work he is doing,
He considers the tinder that flies

And the quick flame pursuing.

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