Collected Poems (Robinson)/Inferential
INFERENTIAL
Although I saw before me there the face Of one whom I had honored among men The least, and on regarding him again Would not have had him in another place,He fitted with an unfamiliar graceThe coffin where I could not see him thenAs I had seen him and appraised him whenI deemed him unessential to the race.
For there was more of him than what I saw.And there was on me more than the old aweThat is the common genius of the dead.I might as well have heard him: "Never mind;If some of us were not so far behind,The rest of us were not so far ahead."