Page:Collected poems Robinson, Edwin Arlington.djvu/114



is a drear and lonely tract of hell From all the common gloom removed afar: A flat, sad land it is, where shadows are, Whose lorn estate my verse may never tell. I walked among them and I knew them well: Men I had slandered on life's little star For churls and sluggards; and I knew the scar Upon their brows of woe ineffable. But as I went majestic on my way, Into the dark they vanished, one by one, Till, with a shaft of God's eternal day, The dream of all my glory was undone, And, with a fool's importunate dismay, I heard the dead men singing in the sun.

gods that have a home beyond the world, Ye that have eyes for all man's agony, Ye that have seen this woe that we have seen,— Look with a just regard, And with an even grace, Here on the shattered corpse of a shattered king, Here on a suffering world where men grow old And wander like sad shadows till, at last, Out of the flare of life, Out of the whirl of years, Into the mist they go, Into the mist of death.