Page:Collected poems Robinson, Edwin Arlington.djvu/294

 And then her face likewise, and shook his head As if at her concern for such a matter: "Specks? What are specks ? Are you afraid of them ?" He murmured slowly, with a drowsy tongue; "There are specks everywhere. I fear them not. If I were king in Camelot, I might Fear more than specks. But now I fear them not. You are too strange a lady to fear specks." He stared a long time at the cup of gold Before him but he drank no more. There came Between him and the world a crumbling sky Of black and crimson, with a crimson cloud That held a far off town of many towers. All swayed and shaken, till at last they fell, And there was nothing but a crimson cloud That crumbled into nothing, like the sky That vanished with it, carrying away The world, the woman, and all memory of them, Until a slow light of another sky Made gray an open casement, showing him Faint shapes of an exotic furniture That glimmered with a dim magnificence, And letting in the sound of many birds That were, as he lay there remembering, The only occupation of his ears Until it seemed they shared a fainter sound, As if a sleeping child with a black head Beside him drew the breath of innocence. One shining afternoon around the fountain, As on the shining day of his arrival, The sunlight was alive with flying silver That had for Merlin a more dazzling flash Than jewels rained in dreams, and a richer sound