You’d come upon a great charred circle where
The patient earth was singed an acre round;
With one stone-stair, symbolic of my life,
Ascending, winding, leading up to nought!
’Tis worth a poet’s seeing. Will you go?’
I made no answer. Had I any right
To weep with this man, that I dared to speak!
A woman stood between his soul and mine,
And waved us off from touching evermore
With those unclean white hands of hers. Enough.
We had burnt our viols and were silent.
So,
The silence lengthened till it pressed. I spoke,
To breathe: ‘I think you were ill afterward.’
‘More ill,’ he answered, ‘had been scarcely ill.
I hoped this feeble fumbling at life’s knot
Might end concisely,—but I failed to die,
As formerly I failed to live,—and thus
Grew willing, having tried all other ways,
To try just God’s. Humility’s so good,
When pride’s impossible. Mark us, how we make
Our virtues, cousin, from our worn-out sins,
Which smack of them from henceforth. Is it right,
For instance, to wed here, while you love there?
And yet because a man sins once, the sin
Cleaves to him, in necessity to sin;
That if he sin not so, to damn himself,
He sins so, to damn others with himself:
