The Three Taverns | Page 4

dark endurances of unavowed reprisals
There were
silent eyes of envy that saw little but saw well; And over beauty's
aftermath of hazardous ambitions
There were tears for what had
vanished as they vanished where they fell. Not assured of what was
theirs, and always hungry for the nameless, There were some whose
only passion was for Time who made them cold: There were numerous
fair women in the Valley of the Shadow, Dreaming rather less of
heaven than of hell when they were old.
Now and then, as if to scorn the common touch of common sorrow,
There were some who gave a few the distant pity of a smile; And
another cloaked a soul as with an ash of human embers,
Having

covered thus a treasure that would last him for a while. There were
many by the presence of the many disaffected,
Whose exemption was
included in the weight that others bore: There were seekers after
darkness in the Valley of the Shadow, And they alone were there to
find what they were looking for.
So they were, and so they are; and as they came are coming others, And
among them are the fearless and the meek and the unborn; And a
question that has held us heretofore without an answer May abide
without an answer until all have ceased to mourn. For the children of
the dark are more to name than are the wretched, Or the broken, or the
weary, or the baffled, or the shamed: There are builders of new
mansions in the Valley of the Shadow, And among them are the dying
and the blinded and the maimed.
The Wandering Jew
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
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
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, --
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.
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
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
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
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.
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
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,

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
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.

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,
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;
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
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.

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
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
That
relegates him out of time
To chaos, I can only ask.
But as I knew
him, so he was;
And somewhere among men to-day
Those old,
unyielding eyes may flash,
And flinch