Page:Collected poems Robinson, Edwin Arlington.djvu/102

 Of his complaint such quaver and such moan That I took pity on him and obeyed, And long stood looking where his hands had laid An ancient woman, shrunk to skin and bone. Far out beyond the forest I could hear The calling of loud progress, and the bold Incessant scream of commerce ringing clear; But though the trumpets of the world were glad, It made me lonely and it made me sad To think that Amaryllis had grown old.

he puts the compromising chart Of hell before your eyes, you are afraid; Because he counts the price that you have paid For innocence, and counts it from the start, You loathe him. But he sees the human heart Of God meanwhile, and in His hand was weighed Tour squeamish and emasculate crusade Against the grim dominion of his art. Never until we conquer the uncouth Connivings of our shamed indifference (We call it Christian faith) are we to scan The racked and shrieking hideousness of Truth To find, in hate's polluted self-defence Throbbing, the pulse, the divine heart of man.

across the cold November moors, Loud with ancestral shame there came the bleak Sad wind that shrieked, and answered with a shriek, Reverberant through lonely corridors.