Page:Collected poems Robinson, Edwin Arlington.djvu/203

 That looked across the fields; and Imogen Gazed out with a girl's gladness in her eyes, Happy to know that she- was back once more Where there were those who knew her, and at last Had gloriously got away again From cabs and clattered asphalt for a "while; And there she sat and talked and looked- and laughed And made the mother and the children laugh. Aunt Imogen made everybody laugh. There was the feminine paradox that she Who had so little sunshine for herself Should have so much for others. How it was. That she could make, and feel for making it, So much of joy for them, and all along Be covering, like a scar, and while she smiled, That hungering incompleteness and regret That passionate ache for something of her own, For something of herself she never knew. She knew that she could seem to make them all Believe there was no other part of her Than her persistent happiness; but the why And how she did not know. Still none of them Could have a thought that she was living down Almost as if regret were criminal, So proud it was and yet so profitless The penance of a dream, and that was good. Her sister Jane the mother of little Jane, Sylvester, and Young George might make herself Believe she knew, for she well, she was Jane. Young George, however, did not yield himself To nourish the false hunger of a ghost That made no good return. He saw too much: The accumulated wisdom of his years