Page:Collected poems Robinson, Edwin Arlington.djvu/180

 My dream this morning was a droll one too: I dreamed that a sad man was in my room, Sitting, as I do now, beside the bed. I questioned him, but he made no reply, Said not a word, but sang." "Said not a word, But sang," the Captain echoed. "Very good. Now tell me what it was the sad man sang." "Now that," said Killigrew, constrainedly, And with a laugh that might have been left out, "Is why I know it must have been a dream. But there he was, and I lay in the bed Like you ; and I could see him just as well As you see my right hand. And for the songs He sang to me there's where the dream part comes." "You don't remember them?" the Captain said, With a weary little chuckle; "very well, I might have guessed it. Never mind your dream, But let me go to sleep." For a moment then There was a frown on Killigrew's good face, And then there was a smile. "Not quite," said he; "The songs that he sang first were sorrowful, And they were stranger than the man himself And he was very strange; but I found out, Through all the gloom of him and of his music, That a say, well, say mystic cheerfulness, Pervaded him; for slowly, as he sang, There came a change, and I began to know The method of it all. Song after song Was ended; and when I had listened there For hours I mean for dream-hours hearing him, And always glad that I was hearing him, There came another change a great one. Tears Rolled out at last like bullets from his eyes, And I could hear them fall down on the floor