Page:Collected poems Robinson, Edwin Arlington.djvu/158

 Had said they were not ordinary birds At all, and they are not: they are the Fates, Foredoomed of their own insufficiency To be assimilated.—Do not think, Because in my contented isolation It suits me at this time to be jocose, That I am nailing reason to the cross, Or that I set the bauble and the bells Above the crucible; for I do nought, Say nought, but with an ancient levity That is the forbear of all earnestness.

"The cross, I said.—I had a dream last night: A dream not like to any other dream That I remember. I was all alone, Sitting as I do now beneath a tree, But looking not, as I am looking now, Against the sunlight. There was neither sun Nor moon, nor do I think of any stars; Yet there was light, and there were cedar trees, And there were sycamores. I lay at rest, Or should have seemed at rest, within a trough Between two giant roots. A weariness Was on me, and I would have gone to sleep, But I had not the courage. If I slept, I feared that I should never wake again; And if I did not sleep I should go mad, And with my own dull tools, which I had used With wretched skill so long, hack out my life. And while I lay there, tortured out of death, Faint waves of cold, as if the dead were breathing, Came over me and through me; and I felt Quick fearful tears of anguish on my face And in my throat. But soon, and in the distance, Concealed, importunate, there was a sound