Page:Collected poems Robinson, Edwin Arlington.djvu/136

 But as the bitterness that loads your tears Makes Dead Sea swimming easy, so the gloom, The penance, and the woeful pride you keep, Make bitterness your buoyance of the world. And at the fairest and the frenziedest Alike of your God-fearing festivals, You so compound the truth to pamper fear That in the doubtful surfeit of your faith You clamor for the food that shadows eat. You call it rapture or deliverance,— Passion or exaltation, or what most The moment needs, but your faint-heartedness Lives in it yet: you quiver and you clutch For something larger, something unfulfilled, Some wiser kind of joy that you shall have Never, until you learn to laugh with God." And with a calm Socratic patronage, At once half sombre and half humorous, The Captain reverently twirled his thumbs And fixed his eyes on something far away; Then, with a gradual gaze, conclusive, shrewd, And at the moment unendurable For sheer beneficence, he looked at me. "But the brass band?" I said, not quite at ease With altruism yet. He made a sort Of reminiscent little inward noise, Midway between a chuckle and a laugh, And that was all his answer: not a word Of explanation or suggestion came From those tight-smiling lips. And when I left, I wondered, as I trod the creaking snow And had the world-wide air to breathe again,— Though I had seen the tremor of his mouth And honored the endurance of his hand—