Page:Collected poems Robinson, Edwin Arlington.djvu/220

 She lived, the more she came to recognize That something out of her thrilled ignorance Was luminously, proudly being born, And thereby proving, thought by forward thought,- The prowess of its image; and she learned At length to look right on to the long days Before her without fearing. She could watch The coming course of them as if they were No more than birds, that slowly, silently, And irretrievably should wing themselves Uncounted out of sight. And when he came Again, she might be free—she would-be free. Else, when he looked at her she must look down, Defeated, and malignly dispossessed Of what was hers to prove and in the proving Wisely to consecrate. And, if the plague Of that perverse defeat should come to be If at that sickening end she were to find Herself to be the same poor prisoner That he had found at first then she must lose All sight and sound of him, she must abjure All possible thought of him; for he would go So far and for so long from her that love— Yes, even a love like his, exiled enough, Might for another's touch be born again— Born to be lost and starved for and not found; Or, at the next, the second wretchedest, It might go mutely flickering down and out, And on some incomplete and piteous day, Some perilous day to come, she might at last Learn, with a noxious freedom, what it is To be at peace with ghosts. Then were the blow Thrice deadlier than any kind of death Could ever be: to know that she had won The truth too late—there were the dregs indeed