Page:Collected poems Robinson, Edwin Arlington.djvu/85

 Shall we, because Eternity records Too vast an answer for the time-born words We spell, whereof so many are dead that once In our capricious lexicons Were so alive and final, hear no more The Word itself, the living word That none alive has ever heard Or ever spelt, And few have ever felt Without the fears and old surrenderings And terrors that began When Death let fall a feather from his wings And humbled the first man? Because the weight of our humility, Wherefrom we gain A little wisdom and much pain, Falls here too sore and there too tedious, Are we in anguish or complacency, Not looking far enough ahead To see by what mad couriers we are led Along the roads of the ridiculous, To pity ourselves and laugh at faith And while we curse life bear it? And if we see the soul's dead end in death, Are we to fear it? What folly is here that has not yet a name Unless we say outright that we are liars? What have we seen beyond our sunset fires That lights again the way by which we came? Why pay we such a price, and one we give So clamoringly, for each racked empty day That leads one more last human hope away, As quiet fiends would lead past our crazed eyes Our children to an unseen sacrifice? If after all that we have lived and thought,