Page:The Man Who Died Twice (1924).djvu/27

 That once in adolescent insolence

Would have believed himself another Titan.

Fernando sat with his large heavy face

Held forward in his hands and cursed his works

Till malediction was a weariness,

And all his makeshift insolence a lie

That only cravens who had trained themselves

To fight and had not fought were silly enough

To fancy for the truth. No insolence

That he remembered would have been sufficient

Without additions and foreseen betrayals

To make of him this penitential emblem

Of that which he was not. When he had called

Himself a worm, another worm turned at once

Within his heart and bit him; and just then

The candid face of one that heretofore

Had been for him as near to the divine