Page:Collected poems Robinson, Edwin Arlington.djvu/606

 A beautified accomplishment no less Indigenous than one that appertains To gentlemen and ladies eating it. The same God planned and made you, beef and human ; And one, but for His whim, might be the other." That's how he says it, Rembrandt, if you listen ; He says it, and he goes. And then, sometimes, There comes another spirit in his place One with a more engaging argument, And with a softer note for saying truth Not soft. Whether it be the truth or not, I name it so; for there's a string in me Somewhere that answers which is natural, Since I am but a living instrument Played on by powers that are invisible. "You might go faster, if not quite so far," He says, "if in your vexed economy There lived a faculty for saying yes And meaning no, and then for doing neither; But since Apollo sees it otherwise, Your Dutchmen, who are swearing at you still For your pernicious filching of their florins, May likely curse you down their generation, Not having understood there was no malice Or grinning evil in a golden shadow That shall outshine their slight identities And hold their faces when their names are nothing. But this, as you discern, or should by now Surmise, for you is neither here nor there: You made your picture as your demon willed it ; That's about all of that. Now make as many As may be to be made, for so you will, Whatever the toll may be, and hold your light So that you see, without so much to blind you