Page:Collected poems Robinson, Edwin Arlington.djvu/79

 And therefore to no other height aspires Than one at which he neither quails nor tires? He may do more by seeing what he sees Than others eager for iniquities; He may, by seeing all things for the best, Incite futurity to do the rest. Or with an even likelihood, He may have met with atrabilious eyes The fires of time on equal terms and passed Indifferently down, until at last His only kind of grandeur would have been, Apparently, in being seen. He may have had for evil or for good No argument; he may have had no care For what without himself went anywhere To failure or to glory, and least of all For such a stale, flamboyant miracle; He may have been the prophet of an art Immovable to old idolatries; He may have been a player without a part, Annoyed that even the sun should have the skies For such a flaming way to advertise; He may have been a painter sick at heart With Nature's toiling for a new surprise; He may have been a cynic, who now, for all Of anything divine that his effete Negation may have tasted, Saw truth in his own image, rather small, Forbore to fever the ephemeral, Found any barren height a good retreat From any swarming street, And in the sun saw power superbly wasted; And when the primitive old-fashioned stars Came out again to shine on joys and wars