Page:Collected poems Robinson, Edwin Arlington.djvu/234

 The fight goes on when fields are still, The triumph clings when arms are down; The jewels of all coronets Are pebbles of the unseen crown; The specious weight of loud reproof Sinks where a still conviction floats; And on God's ocean after storm Time's wreckage is half pilot-boats; And what wet faces wash to sight Thereafter feed the common moan; But Vanderberg no pilot had, Nor could have: he was all alone. Unchallenged by the larger light The starry quest was his to make; And of all ways that are for men, The starry way was his to take. We grant him idle names enough To-day, but even while we frown The fight goes on, the triumph clings, And there is yet the unseen crown But was it his ? Did Vanderberg Find half truth to be passion's thrall, Or as we met him day by day, Was love triumphant, after all? I do not know so much as that; I only know that he died right: Saint Anthony nor Sainte-Nitouche Had ever smiled as he did quite.