Gray-bearded, gray of eye and crowned with gray

Was Glass. It seemed he never had been young;

And, for the grudging habit of his tongue,

None knew the place or season of his birth.

Slowly he ‘woke to anger or to mirth;

Yet none laughed louder when the rare mood fell,

And hate in him was like a still, white hell,

A thing of doom not lightly reconciled.

What memory he kept of wife or child

Was never told; for when his comrades sat