Page:Collected poems Robinson, Edwin Arlington.djvu/213

 Tired of time, bewildered, he sat down; But in his chair he kept on wondering That he should feel so desolately strange And yet-for all he knew that he had lost More of the world than most mer ever win So curiously calm. And he was left Unanswered and unsatisfied: there came No clearer meaning to him than had come Before; the old abstraction was the best That he could find, the farthest he could go; To that was no beginning and no end- No end that he could reach. So he must learn To live the surest and the largest life Attainable in him, would he divine The meaning of the dream and of the words That he had written, without knowing why, On sheets that he had bound up like a book And covered with red leather. There it was— There in his desk, the record he had made, The spiritual plaything of his life: There were the words no eyes had ever seen Save his; there were the words that were not made For glory or for gold. The pretty wife Whom he had loved and lost had not so much As heard of them. They were not made for her. His love had been so much the life of her, And hers had been so much the life of him, That any wayward phrasing on his part Would have had no moment. Neither bad lived enough To know the book, albeit one of them Had grown enough to write it. There it was, However, though he knew not why it was: There was the book, but it was not for her, For she was dead. And yet, there was the book.