I can tell you a bright cold Cambridge windy morning

With slow gulls over the four-towered bridge of stone.

The old man told me who taught me what I am learning

That he walked his troubles over the bridge alone.

Troubled and warm and wise is the way I saw him

In a story of walking from shore to further shore.

There was nothing here, and little there to draw him

Far under or far over the gray waters any more.

Then on the long bridge a man was coming nearer,

As if between two worlds two lost souls met.

The poet, the beggar. A great poet, a drunken beggar,

And what good was it either one of them could get?

But the lost man knew the lost man, no name spoken.

One lost toward heaven and little he could say,

One guessing a greatness time would never darken,

And saying so, but going the other way.