Page:Collected poems Robinson, Edwin Arlington.djvu/155

 "How much of him was earnest and how much Fantastic, I know not; nor do I need Profounder knowledge to exonerate The squalor or the folly of a man Than consciousness though even the crude laugh Of indigent Priapus follow it— That I get good of him. And if you like him, Then some time in the future, past a doubt, You'll have him in a book, make metres of him,— To the great delight of Mr. Killigrew, And the grief of all your kinsmen. Christian shame And self-confuted Orientalism For the more sagacious of them; vulture-tracks Of my Promethean bile for the rest of them; And that will be a joke. There's nothing quite So funny as a joke that's lost on earth And laughed at by the gods. Your devil knows it.

"I come to like your Mr. Killigrew, And I rejoice that you speak well of him. The sprouts of human blossoming are in him, And useful eyes—if he will open them; But one thing ails the man. He smiles too much. He comes to see me once or twice a week, And I must tell him that he smiles too much. If I were Socrates, it would be simple."

Epistle Number Three was longer coming. I waited for it, even worried for it— Though Killigrew, and of his own free will, Had written reassuring little scraps From time to time, and I had valued them The more for being his. "The Sage," he said,