Page:The Man Who Died Twice (1924).djvu/16

 Fernando Nash was beating a bass drum

And shouting Hallelujah with a fervor

At which, as I remember, no man smiled.

Not having seen him for so many years,

And seeing him now almost as one not there

Save in remembrance or imagination,

I made of his identity, once achieved,

The ruin of a potential world-shaker—

For whom the world, which had for twenty years

Concealed him and reduced him, had not shaken.

Here were the features, and to some degree

The massive aggregate of the whole man,

Where former dominance and authority

Had now disintegrated, lapsed, and shrunken

To an inferior mystery that had yet

The presence in defeat. At a first view,