  Outside hove Shasta, snowy height on height, A glory; but a negligible sight, For you had often seen a mountain-peak But not my paper. So we came to speak. A smoke, a smile,—a good way to commence The comfortable exchange of difference!— You a young engineer, five feet eleven, Forty-five chest, with football in your heaven, Liking a road-bed newly built and clean, Your fingers hot to cut away the green Of brush and flowers that bring beside a track The kind of beauty steel lines ought to lack,— And I a poet, wistful of my betters, Reading George Meredith’s high-hearted Letters, Joining betweenwhile in the mingled speech Of a drummer, circus-man, and parson, each Absorbing to himself—as I to me And you to you—a glad identity! After a while when the others went away, A curious kinship made us want to stay, Which I could tell you now; but at the time You thought of baseball teams and I of rhyme, Until we found that we were college men And smoked more easily and smiled again; And I from Cambridge cried, the poet still: “I know your fine Greek Theatre on the hill At Berkeley!” With your happy Grecian head Upraised, “I never saw the place,” you said. “Once I was free of class, I always went Out to the field.” Young engineer, You meant as fair a tribute to the better part As ever I did. Beauty of the heart Is evident in temples. But it breathes Alive where athletes quicken airy wreaths, Which are the lovelier because they die. You are a poet quite as much as I, Though differences appear in what we do, And I an athlete quite as much as you. Because you half-surmised my quarter-mile And I your quatrain, we could greet and smile. Who knows but we shall look again and find The circus-man and drummer, not behind But leading in our visible estate, As discus-thrower and as laureate? Yale Review Witter Bynner |
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