I see at last I am not one but many minds at once, And many personalities. As a boy I took the color of the leaves or wall Where I was resting, climbing. If in truth I lived three months with an uncle, then they said You look just like your uncle. When I worked Under a lawyer's tutelage, they said: How much your face resembles his. I knew My face and voice and gestures simulated Those I admired or lived with. But besides I took a certain pleasure, impish, maybe, In egging on, agreeing with, the souls Whom I sought out; I used to tell my uncle, A man of firmest piety, what I heard Of blasphemy about the village, just To hear him deprecate it, look with dark And flashing eyes upon such sin, while I, With serious face and earnest sympathy With what he felt, was laughing in my sleeve. Here is the germ then of my after life: The faculty that harmonized my hue Of spirit with the place, the person, while Something in me, perhaps supremest self, Stood quite aloof and smiled. But, as I said, When our Republic left its hill of vision, Descended to the place of herding hogs, This self of me, the adventurer, rose up And led me forth to play with life, and first To try theology, as I have said... I was a wonder bred among the crew Of quiet, gate-toothed, crook-nosed psychopaths, The foul-breathed, thick-lipped onanists who filled The seminary, stared at me to see How I learned Sanscrit, could defend and rout The atheistic speculations. Well, What I enjoyed most was to get a crowd Of celibates and talk of chastity, And get them in a glow, and say to them: The mind is fortified by abstinence, The spirit clarified and lifted up-- I got a thrill somehow. But all the time I knew a girl named Ella. Oftentimes Lying beside her I would shriek with laughter And she would ask, what is the matter, John? And I would say: I'm thinking of a song I heard one time: "They'd never know me now." And Ella said: If Dr. Simpson knew That you were here with me, you'd take a fall Out of the Seminary's second floor.... But I went through and didn't fall. And thought This is a way to live, I'll preach awhile, And see what comes. I took a church and preached, Was known as Smith the eloquent, the earnest. But all the time I heard a voice that said: "They'd never know me now." When I came in The Sunday School and little children flocked About my knees and patient teachers looked With white, pure faces at me, then that voice "They'd never know me now" was in my ear....