Although I saw before me there the face <br />Of one whom I had honored among men <br />The least, and on regarding him again <br />Would not have had him in another place, <br />He fitted with an unfamiliar grace <br />The coffin where I could not see him then <br />As I had seen him and appraised him when <br />I deemed him unessential to the race. <br /> <br />For there was more of him than what I saw. <br />And there was on me more than the old awe <br />That is the common genius of the dead. <br />I might as well have heard him: “Never mind; <br />If some of us were not so far behind, <br />The rest of us were not so far ahead.”<br /><br />Edwin Arlington Robinson<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/inferential/
