| |
| I SAW by looking in his eyes | |
| That they remembered everything; | |
| And this was how I came to know | |
| That he was here, still wandering. | |
| For though the figure and the scene | 5 |
| Were never to be reconciled, | |
| I knew the man as I had known | |
| His image when I was a child. | |
| |
| With evidence at every turn, | |
| I should have held it safe to guess | 10 |
| That all the newness of New York | |
| Had nothing new in loneliness; | |
| Yet here was one who might be Noah, | |
| Or Nathan, or Abimelech, | |
| Or Lamech, out of ages lost,— | 15 |
| Or, more than all, Melchizedek. | |
| |
| Assured that he was none of these, | |
| I gave them back their names again, | |
| To scan once more those endless eyes | |
| Where all my questions ended then. | 20 |
| I found in them what they revealed | |
| That I shall not live to forget, | |
| And wondered if they found in mine | |
| Compassion that I might regret. | |
| |
| Pity, I learned, was not the least | 25 |
| Of time’s offending benefits | |
| That had now for so long impugned | |
| The conservation of his wits’ | |
| Rather it was that I should yield, | |
| Alone, the fealty that presents | 30 |
| The tribute of a tempered ear | |
| To an untempered eloquence. | |
| |
| Before I pondered long enough | |
| On whence he came and who he was, | |
| I trembled at his ringing wealth | 35 |
| Of manifold anathemas;. | |
| I wondered, while he seared the world, | |
| What new defection ailed the race, | |
| And if it mattered how remote | |
| Our fathers were from such a place. | 40 |
| |
| Before there was an hour for me | |
| To contemplate with less concern | |
| The crumbling realm awaiting us | |
| Than his that was beyond return, | |
| A dawning on the dust of years | 45 |
| Had shaped with an elusive light | |
| Mirages of remembered scenes | |
| That were no longer for the sight. | |
| |
| For now the gloom that hid the man | |
| Became a daylight on his wrath, | 50 |
| And one wherein my fancy viewed | |
| New lions ramping in his path. | |
| The old were dead and had no fangs, | |
| Wherefore he loved them—seeing not | |
| They were the same that in their time | 55 |
| Had eaten everything they caught. | |
| |
| The world around him was a gift | |
| Of anguish to his eyes and ears, | |
| And one that he had long reviled | |
| As fit for devils, not for seers. | 60 |
| Where, then, was there a place for him | |
| That on this other side of death | |
| Saw nothing good, as he had seen | |
| No good come out of Nazareth? | |
| |
| Yet here there was a reticence, | 65 |
| And I believe his only one, | |
| That hushed him as if he beheld | |
| A Presence that would not be gone. | |
| In such a silence he confessed. | |
| How much there was to be denied; | 70 |
| And he would look at me and live, | |
| As others might have looked and died. | |
| |
| As if at last he knew again | |
| That he had always known, his eyes | |
| Were like to those of one who gazed | 75 |
| On those of One who never dies. | |
| For such a moment he revealed | |
| What life has in it to be lost; | |
| And I could ask if what I saw, | |
| Before me there, was man or ghost. | 80 |
| |
| He may have died so many times | |
| That all there was of him to see | |
| Was pride, that kept itself alive | |
| As too rebellious to be free; | |
| He may have told, when more than once | 85 |
| Humility seemed imminent, | |
| How many a lonely time in vain | |
| The Second Coming came and went. | |
| |
| Whether he still defies or not | |
| The failure of an angry task | 90 |
| That relegates him out of time | |
| To chaos, I can only ask. | |
| But as I knew him, so he was; | |
| And somewhere among men today | |
| Those old, unyielding eyes may flash, | 95 |
And flinch—and look the other way.
The Outlook | |
| |
