Three Taverns: A Book of Poems — 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 grace The coffin where I could not see him then As I had seen him and appraised him when I 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 awe That 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."