Page:Collected poems Robinson, Edwin Arlington.djvu/139

 No fate, no fortune for us, but the old Unswerving and inviolable price Gets paid: God sells himself eternally, But never gives a crust," my friend had said; And while I watched those leaves, and heard those cats, And with half mad minuteness analyzed The Captain's attitude and then my own, I felt at length as one who throws himself Down restless on a couch when clouds are dark, And shuts his eyes to find, when he wakes up And opens them again, what seems at first An unfamiliar sunlight in his room And in his life—as if the child in him Had laughed and let him see; and then I knew Some prowling superfluity of child In me had found the child in Captain Craig And let the sunlight reach him. While I slept, My thought reshaped itself to friendly dreams, And in the morning it was with me still. Through March and shifting April to the time When winter first becomes a memory My friend the Captain—to my other friend's Incredulous regret that such as he Should ever get the talons of his talk So fixed in my unfledged credulity— Kept up the peroration of his life, Not yielding at a threshold, nor, I think, Too often on the stairs. He made me laugh Sometimes, and then again he made me weep Almost; for I had insufficiency Enough in me to make me know the truth Within the jest, and I could feel it there As well as if it were the folded note I felt between my fingers. I had said