Martin Robertson

Now and Then

And Then

And then

never, it says, he never smiled again.

I doubt it, though;

or were it so

that fixed face was not moulded on his heart

but on his will.

Can any misery kill

the natural unpremeditated start

of happiness welling suddenly within,

secreted from a life-time, and released

if not by nothing, at least

in its own moment by almost anything?