Page:Collected poems Robinson, Edwin Arlington.djvu/138

 "Pipe-filler to the Hoboscholiast," "Bread-fruit for the Non-Doing," with one more That I remember, and a dozen more That I forget. I may have been disturbed, I do not say that I was not annoyed, But something of the same serenity That fortified me later made me feel For their skin-pricking arrows not so much Of pain as of a vigorous defect In this world's archery. I might have tried, With a flat facetiousness, to demonstrate What they had only snapped at and thereby Made out of my best evidence no more Than comfortable food for their conceit; But patient wisdom frowned on argument, With a side nod for silence, and I smoked A series of incurable dry pipes While Morgan fiddled, with obnoxious care, Things that I wished he wouldn't. Killigrew, Drowsed with a fond abstraction, like an ass, Lay blinking at me while he grinned and made Remarks. The learned Plunket made remarks. It may have been for smoke that I cursed cats That night, but I have rather to believe As I lay turning, twisting, listening, And wondering, between great sleepless yawns, What possible satisfaction those dead leaves Could find in sending shadows to my room And swinging them like black rags on a line, That I, with a forlorn clear-headedness Was ekeing out probation. I had sinned In fearing to believe what I believed, And I was paying for it.—Whimsical, You think,—factitious; but "there is no luck,