Page:Collected poems Robinson, Edwin Arlington.djvu/216

 There was that foundered reason, overwhelmed it, And with a chilled, intuitive rebuff Beat back the self-cajoling sophistries That his half-tutored thought would half-project. What was it, then ? Had he become transformed And hardened through long watches and long grief Into a loveless, feelingless dead thing That brooded like a man, breathed like a man, Did everything but ache? And was a day To come some time when feeling should return Forever to drive off that other face — The lineless, indistinguishable face — That once had thrilled itself between his own And hers there on the pillow,—and again Between him and the coffin-lid had flashed Like fate before it closed, and at the last Had come, as it should seem, to stay with him, Bidden or not? He were a stranger then, Foredrowsed awhile by some deceiving draught Of poppied anguish, to the covert grief And the stark loneliness that waited him, And for the time were cursedly endowed With a dull trust that shammed indifference To Knowing there would be no touch again Of her small hand on his, no silencing Of her quick lips on his, no feminine Completeness and love-fragrance in the house, No sound of some one singing any more, No smoothing of slow fingers on his hair, No shimmer of pink slippers on brown tiles. But there was nothing, nothing, in all that: He had not fooled himself so much as that; He might be dreaming or he might be sick,