Page:Collected poems Robinson, Edwin Arlington.djvu/232

 I could have blessed the man for that, And he could read me with a smile: "You doubt," said he, "but if we live You'll know me in a little while." He lived; and all as he foretold, I knew him better than he thought: My fancy did not wholly dig The pit where I believed him caught. But yet he lived and laughed, and preached, And worked as only players can: He scoured the shrine that once was home And kept himself a clergyman. The clockwork of his cold routine Put friends far off that once were near; The five staccatos in his laugh Were too defensive and too clear; The glacial sermons that he preached Were longer than they should have been; And, like the man who fashioned them, The best were too divinely thin. But still he lived, and moved, and had The sort of being that was his, Till on a day the shrine of home For him was in the Mysteries : "My friend, there's one thing yet," said he, "And one that I have never shared With any man that I have met ; But you you know me." And he stared