Inferential by Edwin Arlington Robinson — Read

ALTHOUGH I saw before me there the face

Of one whom I had honored among men

The least, and on regarding him again

Would not have had him in another place, / He fitted with an unfamiliar grace

The coffin where I could not see him then

As I had seen him and appraised him when

I deemed him unessential to the race.

For there was more of him than what I saw.

And there was on me more than the old awe

That is the common genius of the dead.

I might as well have heard him: "Never mind; / If some of us were not so far behind, / The rest of us were not so far ahead. "