Page:Collected poems Robinson, Edwin Arlington.djvu/83

 Believing or protesting we believe In such an idle and ephemeral Florescence of the diabolical,— If, robbed of two fond old enormities, Our being had no onward auguries, What then were this great love of ours to say For launching other lives to voyage again A little farther into time and pain, A little faster in a futile chase For a kingdom and a power and a Race That would have still in sight A manifest end of ashes and eternal night? Is this the music of the toys we shake So loud, as if there might be no mistake Somewhere in our indomitable will? Are we no greater than the noise we make Along one blind atomic pilgrimage Whereon by crass chance billeted we go Because our brains and bones and cartilage Will have it so? If this we say, then let us all be still About our share in it, and live and die More quietly thereby. Where was he going, this man against the sky? You know not, nor do I. But this we know, if we know anything: That we may laugh and fight and sing And of our transience here make offering To an orient Word that will not be erased, Or, save in incommunicable gleams Too permanent for dreams, Be found or known. No tonic and ambitious irritant Of increase or of want