Page:Collected poems Robinson, Edwin Arlington.djvu/392

 Between me and the peace I cannot know, My life were like the sound of golden bells Over still fields at sunset, where no storm Should ever blast the sky with fire again, Or thunder follow ruin for you and me, As like it will, if I for one more day, Assume that I see not what I have seen, See now, and shall see. There are no more lies Left anywhere now for me to tell myself That I have not already told myself, And overtold, until today I seem To taste them as I might the poisoned fruit That Patrise had of Mador, and so died. And that same apple of death was to be food For Gawaine; but he left it and lives on, To make his joy of living your confusion. His life is his religion; he loves life With such a manifold exuberance That poison shuns him and seeks out a way To wreak its evil upon innocence. There may be chance in this, there may be Be what there be, I do not fear Gawaine." The Queen, with an indignant little foot, Struck viciously the unoffending grass And said : "Why not let Gawaine go his way? I'll think of him no more, fear him no more, And hear of him no more. I'll hear no more Of any now save one who is, or was, All men to me. And he said once to me That he would say why this day, of all days, Was more mysteriously felicitous For solemn commination than another." Again she smiled, but her blue eyes were telling No more their story of old happiness.