Page:Collected poems Robinson, Edwin Arlington.djvu/123

 a white wall whereon forever breaks Unsatisfied the tumult of green seas, Man's unconjectured godliness rebukes With its imperial silence the lost waves Of insufficient grief. This mortal surge That beats against us now is nothing else Than plangent ignorance. Truth neither shakes Nor wavers; but the world shakes, and we shriek.

jewelled phrase nor mere mellifluous rhyme Reverberates aright, or ever shall, One cadence of that infinite plain-song Which is itself all music. Stronger notes Than any that have ever touched the world Must ring to tell it—ring like hammer-blows, Right-echoed of a chime primordial, On anvils, in the gleaming of God's forge. THE prophet of dead words defeats himself: Whoever would acknowledge and include The foregleam and the glory of the real, Must work with something else than pen and ink And painful preparation: he must work With unseen implements that have no names, And he must win withal, to do that work, Good fortitude, clean wisdom, and strong skill.

To curse the chilled insistence of the dawn Because the free gleam lingers; to defraud