Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869-1935). Collected Poems. 1921.
The Three Taverns
The Wandering Jew
I SAW by looking in his eyes
That they remembered everything;
And this was how I came to know
That he was here, still wandering.
For though the figure and the scene 5
Were never to be reconciled,
I knew the man as I had known
His image when I was a child. With evidence at every turn,
I should have held it safe to guess 10
That all the newness of New York
Had nothing new in loneliness;
Yet here was one who might be Noah,
Or Nathan, or Abimelech,
Or Lamech, out of ages lost,
