William Marion Reedy by Edgar Lee Masters — Stanza

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William Marion Reedy

by Edgar Lee Masters

He sits before you silent as Buddha,

And then you say

This man is Rabelais.

And while you wonder what his stock is,

English or Irish, you behold his eyes

As big and brown as those desirable crockies

With which as boys we used to play.

And then you see the spherical light that lies

Just under the iris coloring,

Before which everything,

Becomes as plain as day.

If you have noticed the rolling jowls

And the face that speaks its chief

Delight in beer and roast beef

Before you have seen his eyes, you see

A man of fleshly jollity,

Like the friars of old in gowns and cowls

To make a show of scowls.

And when he speaks from an orotund depth that growls

In a humorous way like Fielding or Smollett

That turns in a trice to Robert La Follette

Or retraces to Thales of Crete,

And touches upon Descartes coming back

Through the intellectual Zodiac

That's something of a feat.

And you see that the eyes are really the man,

For the thought of him proliferates

This way over to Hindostan,

And that way descanting on Yeats.

With a word on Plato's symposium,

And a little glimpse of Theocritus,

Or something of Bruno's martyrdom,

Or what St. Thomas Aquinas meant

By a certain line obscure to us.

And then he'll take up Horace's odes

Or the Roman civilization;

Or a few of the Iliad's episodes,

Or the Greek deterioration.

Or skip to a word on the plasmic jelly,

Which Benjamin Moore and others think

Is the origin of life. Then Shelley

Comes in a for a look of understanding.

Or he'll tell you about the orientation

Of the ancient dream of Zion.

Or what's the matter with Bryan.

And while the porter is bringing a drink

Something into his fancy skips

And he talks about the Apocalypse,

Or a painter or writer now unknown

In France or Germany who will soon

Have fame of him through the whole earth blown.

It's not so hard a thing to be wise

In the lore of books.

It's a different thing to be all eyes,

Like a lighthouse which revolves and looks

Over the land and out to sea:

And a lighthouse is what he seems to me!

Sitting like Buddha spiritually cool,

Young as the light of the sun is young,

And taking the even with the odd

As a matter of course, and the path he's trod

As a path that was good enough.

With a sort of transcendental sense

Whose hatred is less than indifference,

And a gift of wisdom in love.

And who can say as he classifies

Men and ages with his eyes

With cool detachment: this is dung,

And that poor fellow is just a fool.

And say what you will death is a rod.

But I see a light that shines and shines

And I rather think it's God.