Page:Collected poems Robinson, Edwin Arlington.djvu/311

 And garrulous and so become a fright For Blaise to take out walking in warm weather Should I give way to long considering Of worlds you may have lost while prisoned here With me and my light mind. I contemplate Another name for this forbidden place, And one more fitting. Tell me, if you find it, Some fitter name than Eden. We have had A man and woman in it for some time, And now, it seems, we have a Tree of Knowledge." She looked up at the branches overhead And shrugged hex shoulders. Then she went away; And what was left of Merlin's happiness, Like a disloyal phantom, followed her. He felt the sword of his cold angel thrust And twisted in his heart, as if the end Were coming next, but the cold angel passed Invisibly and left him desolate, With misty brow and eyes. "The man who sees May see too far, and he may see too late The path he takes unseen," he told himself When he found thought again. "The man who sees May go on seeing till the immortal flame That lights and lures him folds him in its heart, And leaves of what there was of him to die An item of inhospitable dust That love and hate alike must hide away; Or there may still be charted for his feet A dimmer faring, where the touch of time Were like the passing of a twilight moth From flower to flower into oblivion, If there were not somewhere a barren end Of moths and flowers, and glimmering far away Beyond a desert where the flowerless days