Page:Avon's harvest.djvu/46

 I saw that he was writhing in it still; But having a magnanimity myself, I waited. There was nothing else to do But wait, and to remember that his tale, Though nearly done, as I divined it was, Yet hovered among shadows and regrets Of twenty years ago. When he began Again to speak, I felt them coming nearer.

"Whenever your poet or your philosopher Has nothing richer for us," he resumed, "He burrows among remnants, like a mouse In a waste-basket, and with much dry noise Comes up again, having found Time at the bottom And filled himself with its futility. 'Time is at once,' he says, to startle us, 'A poison for us, if we make it so,