Page:The Man Who Died Twice (1924).djvu/91

 I'll only ask of you that you believe

What I have told you. For I had it—once.”

To each his own credulity, I say,

And ask as much. Fernando Nash is dead;

And whether his allegiance to the Lord

With a bass drum was earnest of thanksgiving,

Confusion, penance, or the picturesque,

Is not the story. There was in the man,

With all his frailties and extravagances,

The caste of an inviolable distinction

That was to break and vanish only in fire

When other fires that had so long consumed him

Could find no more to burn; and there was in him

A giant’s privacy of lone communion

With older giants who had made a music

Whereof the world was not impossibly