Page:Collected poems Robinson, Edwin Arlington.djvu/224

 As well as if she had them in her hand, What he had written on them long ago, Sjifc years ago, when he was waiting for her. She might as well have said that she could see The man himself, as once he would have looked Had she been there to watch him while he wrote Those words, and all for her. . . . For her whose face Had flashed itself, prophetic and unseen, But not unspirited, between the life That would have been without her and the life That he had gathered up like frozen roots Out of a grave-clod lying at his feet, Unconsciously, and as unconsciously Transplanted and revived. He did not know The kind of life that he had found, nor did He doubt, not knowing it; but well he knew That it was life new life, and that the old Might then with unimprisoned wings go free, Onward and all along to its own light, Through the appointed shadow. While she gazed Upon it there she felt within herself The growing of a newer consciousness The pride of something fairer than her first Outclamoring of interdicted thought Had ever quite foretold; and all at once There quivered and requivered through her flesh, Like music, like the sound of an old song, Triumphant, love-remembered murmurings Of what for passion's innocence had been Too mightily, too perilously hers, Ever to be reclaimed and realized Until to-day. To-day she could throw off The burden that had held her down so long,