SAINTE-NITOUCHE
How it had always been so. And the truth,
Like silence after some far victory,
Had come to her, and she had found it out
As if it were a vision, a thing born
So suddenly! just as a flower is born,
Or as a world is born so suddenly.
SAINTE-NITOUCHE
Though not for common praise of him,
Nor yet for pride or charity,
Still would I make to Yanderberg
One tribute for his memory :
One honest warrant of a friend
Who found with him that flesh was grass
Who neither blamed him in defect
Nor marveled how it came to pass;
Or why it ever was that he
That Vanderberg, of all good men,
Should lose himself to find himself,
Straightway to lose himself again.
For we had buried Sainte-Nitouche,
And he had said to me that night:
"Yes, we hare laid her in the earth,
But what of that?" And he was right.
And he had said : "We have a wife,
We have a child, we have a church;
'T would be a scurrilous way out
If we should leave them in the lurch.
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