Classic Poem

Whole is by breaking and by mending.
The body is a day of ruin,
The mind, a moment of repair.
A day is not a day of mind
Until all lifetime is repaired despair.

To break, to day-long die,
To be not yet nor yet
Until dreaming is of having been,
Until dreaming is of having dreamed—
How in those days—how fast—
How fast we seemed to dream—
How fast we talked—how lost—
How lost the words until—
Until the pen ran down
To this awakened not forgetting.

But in those days always
How forgotten—and to say over—
To say now and now—
Or in a letter to say over soon—

Do you remember now, John,
Our suburban conversation once of bees?
Neatly at breakfast we of bees,
A retired talk or walk
Among the outskirts of profundity?
Slowly of honeycombs and swarms
And angry queens we?

But slowly bees is briefest dozing.
Between the country and the city,
Between sound sleep and walking,
More gives to pause and buzz than bees
A book about—and by—
Nor need tastes differ but to pause.

Do you remember now, John,
Do you remember my friend John
Who had a lordly not-to-hurry eye,
A very previous eye
In an advanced socket?

Yes, I remember.
And I remember my friend Norman,
Though by frugality of will
He shall arrive punctually to-morrow
When even the cinematograph of time
Has ceased to advertise to-day—
Though I remember.

Yes, she remembers all that seemed,
All that was like enough to now
To make a then as actual as then,
To make a now that succeeds only
By a more close resemblance to itself.