She fears him, and will always ask <br />What fated her to choose him; <br />She meets in his engaging mask <br />All reason to refuse him. <br />But what she meets and what she fears <br />Are less than are the downward years, <br />Drawn slowly to the foamless weirs <br />Of age, were she to lose him. <br /> <br />Between a blurred sagacity <br />That once had power to sound him, <br />And Love, that will not let him be <br />The Judas that she found him, <br />Her pride assuages her almost <br />As if it were alone the cost-- <br />He sees that he will not be lost, <br />And waits, and looks around him. <br /> <br />A sense of ocean and old trees <br />Envelops and allures him; <br />Tradition, touching all he sees, <br />Beguiles and reassures him. <br />And all her doubts of what he says <br />Are dimmed by what she knows of days, <br />Till even Prejudice delays <br />And fades, and she secures him. <br /> <br />The falling leaf inaugurates <br />The reign of her confusion; <br />The pounding wave reverberates <br />The dirge of her illusion. <br />And Home, where passion lived and died, <br />Becomes a place where she can hide, <br />While all the town and harbor side <br />Vibrate with her seclusion. <br /> <br />We tell you, tapping on our brows, <br />The story as it should be, <br />As if the story of a house <br />Were told, or ever could be. <br />We'll have no kindly veil between <br />Her visions and those we have seen-- <br />As if we guessed what hers have been, <br />Or what they are or would be. <br /> <br />Meanwhile we do no harm, for they <br />That with a god have striven, <br />Not hearing much of what we say, <br />Take what the god has given. <br />Though like waves breaking it may be, <br />Or like a changed familiar tree, <br />Or like a stairway to the sea, <br />Where down the blind are driven.<br /><br />Edwin Arlington Robinson<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/eros-turannos/
