And richer in dissonance and involution
Than all his dreams together had heretofore
Aspired or dared to be. When halfway down
The second of those four forbidding stairways,
He heard those drums again, and on his face
He felt with more resentment than alarm
A touch of warning, like a chilly wind
Within a tomb. “You are too late,” he said,
Holding his heavy jaws harder together;
“And you have come too many times before.”
Then he went grimly down and out of doors,
And was alone there in a lonely street
That led where soon he might not be so lonely,
Or so severe in his particulars.
After three weeks that would have relegated
A village blacksmith or a stevedore
[ 40 ]
