The New Tenants

    The day was here when it was his to know How fared the barriers he had built between His triumph and his enemies unseen, For them to undermine and overthrow； And it was his no longer to forego The sight of them, insidious and serene, Where they were delving always and had been Left always to be vicious and to grow.

    And there were the new tenants who had come, By doors that were left open unawares, Into his house, and were so much at home There now that he would hardly have to guess, By the slow guile of their vindictiveness, What ultimate insolence would soon be theirs. InferentialAlthough 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."