Page:The Man Who Died Twice (1924).djvu/46

 Into the valley—which had for twenty years

Already beguiled and held him. What had been

Without this uncompanioned expiation,

I do not know, and I might never have known.

The shape of one more foiled obscurity

Might some time as a cadaver have ensured

A massive and unusual exhibition

Of God’s too fallible image—and no more.

Though some had wondered idly, and they might,

Why the defeated features of a giant

Should have been moulded so imperiously

To be the mask of frailty in oblivion,

None would have rated such a scrapped utensil

As more than common, or uncommon, waste;

None would have guessed what violent fire had once,

In such a cracked abandoned crucible,