Page:Collected poems Robinson, Edwin Arlington.djvu/133

 As much as this, we know the truth has been Told over to the world a thousand times;— But we have had no ears to listen yet For more than fragments of it: we have heard A murmur now and then, an echo here And there, and we have made great music of it; And we have made innumerable books To please the Unknown God. Time throws away Dead thousands of them, but the God that knows No death denies not one : the books all count, The songs all count; and yet God's music has No modes, his language has no adjectives." "You may be right, you may be wrong," said I; "But what has this that you are saying now— This nineteenth-century Nirvana-talk— To do with you and me?" The Captain raised His hand and held it westward, where a patched And unwashed attic-window filtered in What barren light could reach us, and then said, With a suave, complacent resonance: "There shines The sun. Behold it. We go round and round, And wisdom comes to us with every whirl We count throughout the circuit. We may say The child is born, the boy becomes a man, The man does this and that, and the man goes,— But having said it we have not said much, Not very much. Do I fancy, or you think, That it will be the end of anything When I am gone ? There was a soldier once Who fought one fight and in that fight fell dead. Sad friends went after, and they brought him home And had a brass band at his funeral, As you should have at mine; and after that A few remembered him. But he was dead,