ISAAC AND ARCHIBALD
That only childhood knows; for the old man
Had looked at me and clutched me with his eye,
And asked if I had ever noticed things.
I told him that I could not think of them,
And I knew then, by the frown that left his face
Unsatisfied, that I had injured him.
"My good young friend," he said, "you cannot feel
What I have seen so long. You have the eyes
Oh, yes but you have not the other things :
The sight within that never will deceive,
You do not know you have no right to know;
The twilight warning of experience,
The singular idea of loneliness,
These are not yours. But they have long been mine,
And they have shown me now for seven years
That Archibald is changing. It is not
So much that He should come to his last hand,
And leave the game, and go the old way down;
But I have known him in and out so long,
And I have seen so much of good in him
That other men have shared and have not seen,
And I have gone so far through thick and thin,
Through cold and fire with him, that now it brings
To this old heart of mine an ache that you
Have not yet lived enough to know about.
But even unto you, and your boy's faith,
Your freedom, and your untried confidence,
A time will come to find out what it means
To know that you are losing what was yours,
To know that you are being left behind;
And then the long contempt of innocence
God bless you, boy! don't think the worse of it
Because an old man chatters in the shade
Will all be like a story you have read
In childhood and remembered for the pictures.
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