Page:Collected poems Robinson, Edwin Arlington.djvu/165

 For you and for the rest, assuredly. 'Attend the testament of Captain Craig: Good citizens, good fathers and your sons, Good mothers and your daughters.' I should say so. Now go away and let me go to sleep." I stood before him and held out my hand, He took it, pressed it; and I felt again The sick soft closing on it. He would not Let go, but lay there, looking up to me With eyes that had a sheen of water on them And a faint wet spark within them. So he clung, Tenaciously, with fingers icy warm, And eyes too full to keep the sheen unbroken. I looked at him. The fingers closed hard once, And then fell down.—I should have left him then. But when we found him the next afternoon, My first thought was that he had made his eyes Miraculously smaller. They were sharp And hard and dry, and the spark in them was dry. For a glance it all but seemed as if the man Had artfully forsworn the brimming gaze Of yesterday, and with a wizard strength Inveigled in, reduced, and vitalized The straw-shine of October; and had that Been truth, we should have humored him no less, Albeit he had fooled us,—for he said That we had made him glad by coming to him. And he was glad: the manner of his words Revealed the source of them; and the gray smile Which lingered like a twilight on his face Told of its own slow fading that it held The promise of the sun. Cadaverous, God knows it was; and we knew it was honest.