A QUESTION

«Tell me», one day to a poet said

        A deep, brutal man,

«If you had to choose between seeing dead

Your wife whom you do love so well

And the loss complete, irreparable,

        Of your verses all, instead -

Which loss would you rather feel?»

The poet glanced with sudden woe

And deep distress at him who so

Broke with a question ill‑foreseen

His inner silence half‑serene,

And he did not answer; and the other

Smiled, as elder to younger brother:

The tortured glance of startled sense

And sudden self‑knowledge intense

And newness of self‑consciousness

Was bitter, as ev'n he could guess.

More than a smile were violence.