Page:Collected poems Robinson, Edwin Arlington.djvu/71

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COLLECTED POEMS

"That I have paid for being calm Is what you see, if you have eyes;For let a man be calm too long, He pays for much before he dies.
"Be calm when you are growing old And you have nothing else to do;Pour not the wine of life too thin If water means the death of you.
"You say I might have learned at home The truth in season to be strong?Not so; I took the wine of life Too thin, and I was calm too long.
"Like others who are strong too late, For me there was no going back;For I had found another speed, And I was on the other track.
"God knows how far I might have gone Or what there might have been to see;But my speed had a sudden end, And here you have the end of me."
The end or not, it may be now But little farther from the truthTo say those worn satiric eyes Had something of immortal youth.
He may among the millions here Be one; or he may, quite as well,Be gone to find again the Tree Of Knowledge, out of which he fell.

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