Page:Collected poems Robinson, Edwin Arlington.djvu/222

 To touch, not knowing why, the vexed-up ghost Of what was gone? Yes, there was Argan's face, Pallid and pinched and ruinously marked With big pathetic bones; there were his eyes, Quiet and large, fixed wistfully on hers; And there, close-pressed again within her own, Quivered his cold thin fingers. And, ah! yes, There were the words, those dying words again, And hers that answered when she promised him. Promised him ? . . . yes. And had she known the truth Of what she felt that he should ask her that, And had she known the love that was to be, God knew that she could not have told him then. But then she knew it not, nor thought of it; There was no need of it; nor was there need Of any problematical support Whereto to cling while she convinced herself That love's intuitive utility, Inexorably merciful, had proved That what was human was unpermanent And what was flesh was ashes. She had told Him then thatjhja^yould love -rttrotfaer man, That there was nok.another man-on earth Whom she could ever love, or who could make So much as a love thought go through her brain; And he had smiled. And just before he died His lips had made as if to say something Something that passed unwhispered with his breath, Out of her reach, out of all quest of it. And then, could she have known enough to know The meaning of her grief, the folly of it, The faithlessness and the proud anguish of it, There might be now no threads to punish her,