To
               the memory of
               WILLIAM EDWARD BUTLER

     The man Flammonde, from God knows where,
     With firm address and foreign air,
     With news of nations in his talk
     And something royal in his walk,
     With glint of iron in his eyes,
     But never doubt, nor yet surprise,
     Appeared, and stayed, and held his head
     As one by kings accredited.

     Erect, with his alert repose
     About him, and about his clothes,
     He pictured all tradition hears
     Of what we owe to fifty years.
     His cleansing heritage of taste
     Paraded neither want nor waste;
     And what he needed for his fee
     To live, he borrowed graciously.

     He never told us what he was,
     Or what mischance, or other cause,
     Had banished him from better days
     To play the Prince of Castaways.
     Meanwhile he played surpassing well
     A part, for most, unplayable;
     In fine, one pauses, half afraid
     To say for certain that he played.

     For that, one may as well forego
     Conviction as to yes or no;
     Nor can I say just how intense
     Would then have been the difference
     To several, who, having striven
     In vain to get what he was given,
     Would see the stranger taken on
     By friends not easy to be won.

     Moreover, many a malcontent
     He soothed and found munificent;
     His courtesy beguiled and foiled
     Suspicion that his years were soiled;
     His mien distinguished any crowd,
     His credit strengthened when he bowed;
     And women, young and old, were fond
     Of looking at the man Flammonde.

     There was a woman in our town
     On whom the fashion was to frown;
     But while our talk renewed the tinge
     Of a long-faded scarlet fringe,
     The man Flammonde saw none of that,
     And what he saw we wondered at—
     That none of us, in her distress,
     Could hide or find our littleness.

     There was a boy that all agreed
     Had shut within him the rare seed
     Of learning.  We could understand,
     But none of us could lift a hand.
     The man Flammonde appraised the youth,
     And told a few of us the truth;
     And thereby, for a little gold,
     A flowered future was unrolled.

     There were two citizens who fought
     For years and years, and over nought;
     They made life awkward for their friends,
     And shortened their own dividends.
     The man Flammonde said what was wrong
     Should be made right; nor was it long
     Before they were again in line,
     And had each other in to dine.

     And these I mention are but four
     Of many out of many more.
     So much for them.  But what of him—
     So firm in every look and limb?
     What small satanic sort of kink
     Was in his brain?  What broken link
     Withheld him from the destinies
     That came so near to being his?

     What was he, when we came to sift
     His meaning, and to note the drift
     Of incommunicable ways
     That make us ponder while we praise?
     Why was it that his charm revealed
     Somehow the surface of a shield?
     What was it that we never caught?
     What was he, and what was he not?

     How much it was of him we met
     We cannot ever know; nor yet
     Shall all he gave us quite atone
     For what was his, and his alone;
     Nor need we now, since he knew best,
     Nourish an ethical unrest:
     Rarely at once will nature give
     The power to be Flammonde and live.

     We cannot know how much we learn
     From those who never will return,
     Until a flash of unforeseen
     Remembrance falls on what has been.
     We've each a darkening hill to climb;
     And this is why, from time to time
     In Tilbury Town, we look beyond
     Horizons for the man Flammonde.

     Blessed with a joy that only she
     Of all alive shall ever know,
     She wears a proud humility
     For what it was that willed it so,—
     That her degree should be so great
     Among the favored of the Lord
     That she may scarcely bear the weight
     Of her bewildering reward.

     As one apart, immune, alone,
     Or featured for the shining ones,
     And like to none that she has known
     Of other women's other sons,—
     The firm fruition of her need,
     He shines anointed; and he blurs
     Her vision, till it seems indeed
     A sacrilege to call him hers.

     She fears a little for so much
     Of what is best, and hardly dares
     To think of him as one to touch
     With aches, indignities, and cares;
     She sees him rather at the goal,
     Still shining; and her dream foretells
     The proper shining of a soul
     Where nothing ordinary dwells.

     Perchance a canvass of the town
     Would find him far from flags and shouts,
     And leave him only the renown
     Of many smiles and many doubts;
     Perchance the crude and common tongue
     Would havoc strangely with his worth;
     But she, with innocence unwrung,
     Would read his name around the earth.

     And others, knowing how this youth
     Would shine, if love could make him great,
     When caught and tortured for the truth
     Would only writhe and hesitate;
     While she, arranging for his days
     What centuries could not fulfill,
     Transmutes him with her faith and praise,
     And has him shining where she will.

     She crowns him with her gratefulness,
     And says again that life is good;
     And should the gift of God be less
     In him than in her motherhood,
     His fame, though vague, will not be small,
     As upward through her dream he fares,
     Half clouded with a crimson fall
     Of roses thrown on marble stairs.

     "Be calm?  And was I frantic?
      You'll have me laughing soon.
     I'm calm as this Atlantic,
      And quiet as the moon;
     I may have spoken faster
      Than once, in other days;
     For I've no more a master,
      And now—'Be calm,' he says.

     "Fear not, fear no commotion,—
      I'll be as rocks and sand;
     The moon and stars and ocean
      Will envy my command;
     No creature could be stiller
      In any kind of place
     Than I...  No, I'll not kill her;
      Her death is in her face.

     "Be happy while she has it,
      For she'll not have it long;
     A year, and then you'll pass it,
      Preparing a new song.
     And I'm a fool for prating
      Of what a year may bring,
     When more like her are waiting
      For more like you to sing.

     "You mock me with denial,
      You mean to call me hard?
     You see no room for trial
      When all my doors are barred?
     You say, and you'd say dying,
      That I dream what I know;
     And sighing, and denying,
      You'd hold my hand and go.

     "You scowl—and I don't wonder;
      I spoke too fast again;
     But you'll forgive one blunder,
      For you are like most men:
     You are,—or so you've told me,
      So many mortal times,
     That heaven ought not to hold me
      Accountable for crimes.

     "Be calm?  Was I unpleasant?
      Then I'll be more discreet,
     And grant you, for the present,
      The balm of my defeat:
     What she, with all her striving,
      Could not have brought about,
     You've done.  Your own contriving
      Has put the last light out.

     "If she were the whole story,
      If worse were not behind,
     I'd creep with you to glory,
      Believing I was blind;
     I'd creep, and go on seeming
      To be what I despise.
     You laugh, and say I'm dreaming,
      And all your laughs are lies.

     "Are women mad?  A few are,
      And if it's true you say—
     If most men are as you are—
      We'll all be mad some day.
     Be calm—and let me finish;
      There's more for you to know.
     I'll talk while you diminish,
      And listen while you grow.

     "There was a man who married
      Because he couldn't see;
     And all his days he carried
      The mark of his degree.
     But you—you came clear-sighted,
      And found truth in my eyes;
     And all my wrongs you've righted
      With lies, and lies, and lies.

     "You've killed the last assurance
      That once would have me strive
     To rouse an old endurance
      That is no more alive.
     It makes two people chilly
      To say what we have said,
     But you—you'll not be silly
      And wrangle for the dead.

     "You don't?  You never wrangle?
      Why scold then,—or complain?
     More words will only mangle
      What you've already slain.
     Your pride you can't surrender?
      My name—for that you fear?
     Since when were men so tender,
      And honor so severe?

     "No more—I'll never bear it.
      I'm going.  I'm like ice.
     My burden?  You would share it?
      Forbid the sacrifice!
     Forget so quaint a notion,
      And let no more be told;
     For moon and stars and ocean
      And you and I are cold."

     I heard one who said:  "Verily,
      What word have I for children here?
     Your Dollar is your only Word,
      The wrath of it your only fear.

     "You build it altars tall enough
      To make you see, but you are blind;
     You cannot leave it long enough
      To look before you or behind.

     "When Reason beckons you to pause,
      You laugh and say that you know best;
     But what it is you know, you keep
      As dark as ingots in a chest.

     "You laugh and answer, 'We are young;
      O leave us now, and let us grow.'—
     Not asking how much more of this
      Will Time endure or Fate bestow.

     "Because a few complacent years
      Have made your peril of your pride,
     Think you that you are to go on
      Forever pampered and untried?

     "What lost eclipse of history,
      What bivouac of the marching stars,
     Has given the sign for you to see
      Millenniums and last great wars?

     "What unrecorded overthrow
      Of all the world has ever known,
     Or ever been, has made itself
      So plain to you, and you alone?

     "Your Dollar, Dove and Eagle make
      A Trinity that even you
     Rate higher than you rate yourselves;
      It pays, it flatters, and it's new.

     "And though your very flesh and blood
      Be what your Eagle eats and drinks,
     You'll praise him for the best of birds,
      Not knowing what the Eagle thinks.

     "The power is yours, but not the sight;
      You see not upon what you tread;
     You have the ages for your guide,
      But not the wisdom to be led.

     "Think you to tread forever down
      The merciless old verities?
     And are you never to have eyes
      To see the world for what it is?

     "Are you to pay for what you have
      With all you are?"—No other word
     We caught, but with a laughing crowd
      Moved on.  None heeded, and few heard.

     "Tell me what you're doing over here, John Gorham,
     Sighing hard and seeming to be sorry when you're not;
     Make me laugh or let me go now, for long faces in the moonlight
     Are a sign for me to say again a word that you forgot."—

     "I'm over here to tell you what the moon already
     May have said or maybe shouted ever since a year ago;
     I'm over here to tell you what you are, Jane Wayland,
     And to make you rather sorry, I should say, for being so."—

     "Tell me what you're saying to me now, John Gorham,
     Or you'll never see as much of me as ribbons any more;
     I'll vanish in as many ways as I have toes and fingers,
     And you'll not follow far for one where flocks have been before."—

     "I'm sorry now you never saw the flocks, Jane Wayland,
     But you're the one to make of them as many as you need.
     And then about the vanishing.  It's I who mean to vanish;
     And when I'm here no longer you'll be done with me indeed."—

     "That's a way to tell me what I am, John Gorham!
     How am I to know myself until I make you smile?
     Try to look as if the moon were making faces at you,
     And a little more as if you meant to stay a little while."—

     "You are what it is that over rose-blown gardens
     Makes a pretty flutter for a season in the sun;
     You are what it is that with a mouse, Jane Wayland,
     Catches him and lets him go and eats him up for fun."—

     "Sure I never took you for a mouse, John Gorham;
     All you say is easy, but so far from being true
     That I wish you wouldn't ever be again the one to think so;
     For it isn't cats and butterflies that I would be to you."—

     "All your little animals are in one picture—
     One I've had before me since a year ago to-night;
     And the picture where they live will be of you, Jane Wayland,
     Till you find a way to kill them or to keep them out of sight."—

     "Won't you ever see me as I am, John Gorham,
     Leaving out the foolishness and all I never meant?
     Somewhere in me there's a woman, if you know the way to find her.
     Will you like me any better if I prove it and repent?"

     "I doubt if I shall ever have the time, Jane Wayland;
     And I dare say all this moonlight lying round us might as well
     Fall for nothing on the shards of broken urns that are forgotten,
     As on two that have no longer much of anything to tell."

     Once there was a cabin here, and once there was a man;
     And something happened here before my memory began.
     Time has made the two of them the fuel of one flame
     And all we have of them is now a legend and a name.

     All I have to say is what an old man said to me,
     And that would seem to be as much as there will ever be.
     "Fifty years ago it was we found it where it sat."—
     And forty years ago it was old Archibald said that.

     "An apple tree that's yet alive saw something, I suppose,
     Of what it was that happened there, and what no mortal knows.
     Some one on the mountain heard far off a master shriek,
     And then there was a light that showed the way for men to seek.

     "We found it in the morning with an iron bar behind,
     And there were chains around it; but no search could ever find,
     Either in the ashes that were left, or anywhere,
     A sign to tell of who or what had been with Stafford there.

     "Stafford was a likely man with ideas of his own—
     Though I could never like the kind that likes to live alone;
     And when you met, you found his eyes were always on your shoes,
     As if they did the talking when he asked you for the news.

     "That's all, my son.  Were I to talk for half a hundred years
     I'd never clear away from there the cloud that never clears.
     We buried what was left of it,—the bar, too, and the chains;
     And only for the apple tree there's nothing that remains."

     Forty years ago it was I heard the old man say,
     "That's all, my son."—And here again I find the place to-day,
     Deserted and told only by the tree that knows the most,
     And overgrown with golden-rod as if there were no ghost.

         (To Mrs. Edward MacDowell)

     No sound of any storm that shakes
     Old island walls with older seas
     Comes here where now September makes
     An island in a sea of trees.

     Between the sunlight and the shade
     A man may learn till he forgets
     The roaring of a world remade,
     And all his ruins and regrets;

     And if he still remembers here
     Poor fights he may have won or lost,—
     If he be ridden with the fear
     Of what some other fight may cost,—

     If, eager to confuse too soon,
     What he has known with what may be,
     He reads a planet out of tune
     For cause of his jarred harmony,—

     If here he venture to unroll
     His index of adagios,
     And he be given to console
     Humanity with what he knows,—

     He may by contemplation learn
     A little more than what he knew,
     And even see great oaks return
     To acorns out of which they grew.

     He may, if he but listen well,
     Through twilight and the silence here,
     Be told what there are none may tell
     To vanity's impatient ear;

     And he may never dare again
     Say what awaits him, or be sure
     What sunlit labyrinth of pain
     He may not enter and endure.

     Who knows to-day from yesterday
     May learn to count no thing too strange:
     Love builds of what Time takes away,
     Till Death itself is less than Change.

     Who sees enough in his duress
     May go as far as dreams have gone;
     Who sees a little may do less
     Than many who are blind have done;

     Who sees unchastened here the soul
     Triumphant has no other sight
     Than has a child who sees the whole
     World radiant with his own delight.

     Far journeys and hard wandering
     Await him in whose crude surmise
     Peace, like a mask, hides everything
     That is and has been from his eyes;

     And all his wisdom is unfound,
     Or like a web that error weaves
     On airy looms that have a sound
     No louder now than falling leaves.

     In Tilbury Town did Old King Cole
     A wise old age anticipate,
     Desiring, with his pipe and bowl,
     No Khan's extravagant estate.
     No crown annoyed his honest head,
     No fiddlers three were called or needed;
     For two disastrous heirs instead
     Made music more than ever three did.

     Bereft of her with whom his life
     Was harmony without a flaw,
     He took no other for a wife,
     Nor sighed for any that he saw;
     And if he doubted his two sons,
     And heirs, Alexis and Evander,
     He might have been as doubtful once
     Of Robert Burns and Alexander.

     Alexis, in his early youth,
     Began to steal—from old and young.
     Likewise Evander, and the truth
     Was like a bad taste on his tongue.
     Born thieves and liars, their affair
     Seemed only to be tarred with evil—
     The most insufferable pair
     Of scamps that ever cheered the devil.

     The world went on, their fame went on,
     And they went on—from bad to worse;
     Till, goaded hot with nothing done,
     And each accoutred with a curse,
     The friends of Old King Cole, by twos,
     And fours, and sevens, and elevens,
     Pronounced unalterable views
     Of doings that were not of heaven's.

     And having learned again whereby
     Their baleful zeal had come about,
     King Cole met many a wrathful eye
     So kindly that its wrath went out—
     Or partly out.  Say what they would,
     He seemed the more to court their candor;
     But never told what kind of good
     Was in Alexis and Evander.

     And Old King Cole, with many a puff
     That haloed his urbanity,
     Would smoke till he had smoked enough,
     And listen most attentively.
     He beamed as with an inward light
     That had the Lord's assurance in it;
     And once a man was there all night,
     Expecting something every minute.

     But whether from too little thought,
     Or too much fealty to the bowl,
     A dim reward was all he got
     For sitting up with Old King Cole.
     "Though mine," the father mused aloud,
     "Are not the sons I would have chosen,
     Shall I, less evilly endowed,
     By their infirmity be frozen?

     "They'll have a bad end, I'll agree,
     But I was never born to groan;
     For I can see what I can see,
     And I'm accordingly alone.
     With open heart and open door,
     I love my friends, I like my neighbors;
     But if I try to tell you more,
     Your doubts will overmatch my labors.

     "This pipe would never make me calm,
     This bowl my grief would never drown.
     For grief like mine there is no balm
     In Gilead, or in Tilbury Town.
     And if I see what I can see,
     I know not any way to blind it;
     Nor more if any way may be
     For you to grope or fly to find it.

     "There may be room for ruin yet,
     And ashes for a wasted love;
     Or, like One whom you may forget,
     I may have meat you know not of.
     And if I'd rather live than weep
     Meanwhile, do you find that surprising?
     Why, bless my soul, the man's asleep!
     That's good.  The sun will soon be rising."

     You are a friend then, as I make it out,
     Of our man Shakespeare, who alone of us
     Will put an ass's head in Fairyland
     As he would add a shilling to more shillings,
     All most harmonious,—and out of his
     Miraculous inviolable increase
     Fills Ilion, Rome, or any town you like
     Of olden time with timeless Englishmen;
     And I must wonder what you think of him—
     All you down there where your small Avon flows
     By Stratford, and where you're an Alderman.
     Some, for a guess, would have him riding back
     To be a farrier there, or say a dyer;
     Or maybe one of your adept surveyors;
     Or like enough the wizard of all tanners.
     Not you—no fear of that; for I discern
     In you a kindling of the flame that saves—
     The nimble element, the true phlogiston;
     I see it, and was told of it, moreover,
     By our discriminate friend himself, no other.
     Had you been one of the sad average,
     As he would have it,—meaning, as I take it,
     The sinew and the solvent of our Island,
     You'd not be buying beer for this Terpander's
     Approved and estimated friend Ben Jonson;
     He'd never foist it as a part of his
     Contingent entertainment of a townsman
     While he goes off rehearsing, as he must,
     If he shall ever be the Duke of Stratford.
     And my words are no shadow on your town—
     Far from it; for one town's as like another
     As all are unlike London.  Oh, he knows it,—
     And there's the Stratford in him; he denies it,
     And there's the Shakespeare in him.  So, God help him!
     I tell him he needs Greek; but neither God
     Nor Greek will help him.  Nothing will help that man.
     You see the fates have given him so much,
     He must have all or perish,—or look out
     Of London, where he sees too many lords;
     They're part of half what ails him:  I suppose
     There's nothing fouler down among the demons
     Than what it is he feels when he remembers
     The dust and sweat and ointment of his calling
     With his lords looking on and laughing at him.
     King as he is, he can't be king de facto,
     And that's as well, because he wouldn't like it;
     He'd frame a lower rating of men then
     Than he has now; and after that would come
     An abdication or an apoplexy.
     He can't be king, not even king of Stratford,—
     Though half the world, if not the whole of it,
     May crown him with a crown that fits no king
     Save Lord Apollo's homesick emissary:
     Not there on Avon, or on any stream
     Where Naiads and their white arms are no more,
     Shall he find home again.  It's all too bad.
     But there's a comfort, for he'll have that House—
     The best you ever saw; and he'll be there
     Anon, as you're an Alderman.  Good God!
     He makes me lie awake o' nights and laugh.
     And you have known him from his origin,
     You tell me; and a most uncommon urchin
     He must have been to the few seeing ones—
     A trifle terrifying, I dare say,
     Discovering a world with his man's eyes,
     Quite as another lad might see some finches,
     If he looked hard and had an eye for nature.
     But this one had his eyes and their foretelling,
     And he had you to fare with, and what else?
     He must have had a father and a mother—
     In fact I've heard him say so—and a dog,
     As a boy should, I venture; and the dog,
     Most likely, was the only man who knew him.
     A dog, for all I know, is what he needs
     As much as anything right here to-day,
     To counsel him about his disillusions,
     Old aches, and parturitions of what's coming,—
     A dog of orders, an emeritus,
     To wag his tail at him when he comes home,
     And then to put his paws up on his knees
     And say, "For God's sake, what's it all about?"

     I don't know whether he needs a dog or not—
     Or what he needs.  I tell him he needs Greek;
     I'll talk of rules and Aristotle with him,
     And if his tongue's at home he'll say to that,
     "I have your word that Aristotle knows,
     And you mine that I don't know Aristotle."
     He's all at odds with all the unities,
     And what's yet worse, it doesn't seem to matter;
     He treads along through Time's old wilderness
     As if the tramp of all the centuries
     Had left no roads—and there are none, for him;
     He doesn't see them, even with those eyes,—
     And that's a pity, or I say it is.
     Accordingly we have him as we have him—
     Going his way, the way that he goes best,
     A pleasant animal with no great noise
     Or nonsense anywhere to set him off—
     Save only divers and inclement devils
     Have made of late his heart their dwelling place.
     A flame half ready to fly out sometimes
     At some annoyance may be fanned up in him,
     But soon it falls, and when it falls goes out;
     He knows how little room there is in there
     For crude and futile animosities,
     And how much for the joy of being whole,
     And how much for long sorrow and old pain.
     On our side there are some who may be given
     To grow old wondering what he thinks of us
     And some above us, who are, in his eyes,
     Above himself,—and that's quite right and English.
     Yet here we smile, or disappoint the gods
     Who made it so:  the gods have always eyes
     To see men scratch; and they see one down here
     Who itches, manor-bitten to the bone,
     Albeit he knows himself—yes, yes, he knows—
     The lord of more than England and of more
     Than all the seas of England in all time
     Shall ever wash.  D'ye wonder that I laugh?
     He sees me, and he doesn't seem to care;
     And why the devil should he?  I can't tell you.

     I'll meet him out alone of a bright Sunday,
     Trim, rather spruce, and quite the gentleman.
     "What ho, my lord!" say I.  He doesn't hear me;
     Wherefore I have to pause and look at him.
     He's not enormous, but one looks at him.
     A little on the round if you insist,
     For now, God save the mark, he's growing old;
     He's five and forty, and to hear him talk
     These days you'd call him eighty; then you'd add
     More years to that.  He's old enough to be
     The father of a world, and so he is.
     "Ben, you're a scholar, what's the time of day?"
     Says he; and there shines out of him again
     An aged light that has no age or station—
     The mystery that's his—a mischievous
     Half-mad serenity that laughs at fame
     For being won so easy, and at friends
     Who laugh at him for what he wants the most,
     And for his dukedom down in Warwickshire;—
     By which you see we're all a little jealous....
     Poor Greene!  I fear the color of his name
     Was even as that of his ascending soul;
     And he was one where there are many others,—
     Some scrivening to the end against their fate,
     Their puppets all in ink and all to die there;
     And some with hands that once would shade an eye
     That scanned Euripides and Aeschylus
     Will reach by this time for a pot-house mop
     To slush their first and last of royalties.
     Poor devils! and they all play to his hand;
     For so it was in Athens and old Rome.
     But that's not here or there; I've wandered off.
     Greene does it, or I'm careful.  Where's that boy?

     Yes, he'll go back to Stratford.  And we'll miss him?
     Dear sir, there'll be no London here without him.
     We'll all be riding, one of these fine days,
     Down there to see him—and his wife won't like us;
     And then we'll think of what he never said
     Of women—which, if taken all in all
     With what he did say, would buy many horses.
     Though nowadays he's not so much for women:
     "So few of them," he says, "are worth the guessing."
     But there's a work at work when he says that,
     And while he says it one feels in the air
     A deal of circumambient hocus-pocus.
     They've had him dancing till his toes were tender,
     And he can feel 'em now, come chilly rains.
     There's no long cry for going into it,
     However, and we don't know much about it.
     The Fitton thing was worst of all, I fancy;
     And you in Stratford, like most here in London,
     Have more now in the 'Sonnets' than you paid for;
     He's put her there with all her poison on,
     To make a singing fiction of a shadow
     That's in his life a fact, and always will be.
     But she's no care of ours, though Time, I fear,
     Will have a more reverberant ado
     About her than about another one
     Who seems to have decoyed him, married him,
     And sent him scuttling on his way to London,—
     With much already learned, and more to learn,
     And more to follow.  Lord! how I see him now,
     Pretending, maybe trying, to be like us.
     Whatever he may have meant, we never had him;
     He failed us, or escaped, or what you will,—
     And there was that about him (God knows what,—
     We'd flayed another had he tried it on us)
     That made as many of us as had wits
     More fond of all his easy distances
     Than one another's noise and clap-your-shoulder.
     But think you not, my friend, he'd never talk!
     Talk?  He was eldritch at it; and we listened—
     Thereby acquiring much we knew before
     About ourselves, and hitherto had held
     Irrelevant, or not prime to the purpose.
     And there were some, of course, and there be now,
     Disordered and reduced amazedly
     To resignation by the mystic seal
     Of young finality the gods had laid
     On everything that made him a young demon;
     And one or two shot looks at him already
     As he had been their executioner;
     And once or twice he was, not knowing it,—
     Or knowing, being sorry for poor clay
     And saying nothing....  Yet, for all his engines,
     You'll meet a thousand of an afternoon
     Who strut and sun themselves and see around 'em
     A world made out of more that has a reason
     Than his, I swear, that he sees here to-day;
     Though he may scarcely give a Fool an exit
     But we mark how he sees in everything
     A law that, given we flout it once too often,
     Brings fire and iron down on our naked heads.
     To me it looks as if the power that made him,
     For fear of giving all things to one creature,
     Left out the first,—faith, innocence, illusion,
     Whatever 'tis that keeps us out o' Bedlam,—
     And thereby, for his too consuming vision,
     Empowered him out of nature; though to see him,
     You'd never guess what's going on inside him.
     He'll break out some day like a keg of ale
     With too much independent frenzy in it;
     And all for cellaring what he knows won't keep,
     And what he'd best forget—but that he can't.
     You'll have it, and have more than I'm foretelling;
     And there'll be such a roaring at the Globe
     As never stunned the bleeding gladiators.
     He'll have to change the color of its hair
     A bit, for now he calls it Cleopatra.
     Black hair would never do for Cleopatra.

     But you and I are not yet two old women,
     And you're a man of office.  What he does
     Is more to you than how it is he does it,—
     And that's what the Lord God has never told him.
     They work together, and the Devil helps 'em;
     They do it of a morning, or if not,
     They do it of a night; in which event
     He's peevish of a morning.  He seems old;
     He's not the proper stomach or the sleep—
     And they're two sovran agents to conserve him
     Against the fiery art that has no mercy
     But what's in that prodigious grand new House.
     I gather something happening in his boyhood
     Fulfilled him with a boy's determination
     To make all Stratford 'ware of him.  Well, well,
     I hope at last he'll have his joy of it,
     And all his pigs and sheep and bellowing beeves,
     And frogs and owls and unicorns, moreover,
     Be less than hell to his attendant ears.
     Oh, past a doubt we'll all go down to see him.

     He may be wise.  With London two days off,
     Down there some wind of heaven may yet revive him;
     But there's no quickening breath from anywhere
     Shall make of him again the poised young faun
     From Warwickshire, who'd made, it seems, already
     A legend of himself before I came
     To blink before the last of his first lightning.
     Whatever there be, they'll be no more of that;
     The coming on of his old monster Time
     Has made him a still man; and he has dreams
     Were fair to think on once, and all found hollow.
     He knows how much of what men paint themselves
     Would blister in the light of what they are;
     He sees how much of what was great now shares
     An eminence transformed and ordinary;
     He knows too much of what the world has hushed
     In others, to be loud now for himself;
     He knows now at what height low enemies
     May reach his heart, and high friends let him fall;
     But what not even such as he may know
     Bedevils him the worst:  his lark may sing
     At heaven's gate how he will, and for as long
     As joy may listen; but HE sees no gate,
     Save one whereat the spent clay waits a little
     Before the churchyard has it, and the worm.
     Not long ago, late in an afternoon,
     I came on him unseen down Lambeth way,
     And on my life I was afear'd of him:
     He gloomed and mumbled like a soul from Tophet,
     His hands behind him and his head bent solemn.
     "What is it now," said I,—"another woman?"
     That made him sorry for me, and he smiled.
     "No, Ben," he mused; "it's Nothing.  It's all Nothing.
     We come, we go; and when we're done, we're done;
     Spiders and flies—we're mostly one or t'other—
     We come, we go; and when we're done, we're done."
     "By God, you sing that song as if you knew it!"
     Said I, by way of cheering him; "what ails ye?"
     "I think I must have come down here to think,"
     Says he to that, and pulls his little beard;
     "Your fly will serve as well as anybody,
     And what's his hour?  He flies, and flies, and flies,
     And in his fly's mind has a brave appearance;
     And then your spider gets him in her net,
     And eats him out, and hangs him up to dry.
     That's Nature, the kind mother of us all.
     And then your slattern housemaid swings her broom,
     And where's your spider?  And that's Nature, also.
     It's Nature, and it's Nothing.  It's all Nothing.
     It's all a world where bugs and emperors
     Go singularly back to the same dust,
     Each in his time; and the old, ordered stars
     That sang together, Ben, will sing the same
     Old stave to-morrow."

                            When he talks like that,
     There's nothing for a human man to do
     But lead him to some grateful nook like this
     Where we be now, and there to make him drink.
     He'll drink, for love of me, and then be sick;
     A sad sign always in a man of parts,
     And always very ominous.  The great
     Should be as large in liquor as in love,—
     And our great friend is not so large in either:
     One disaffects him, and the other fails him;
     Whatso he drinks that has an antic in it,
     He's wondering what's to pay in his insides;
     And while his eyes are on the Cyprian
     He's fribbling all the time with that damned House.
     We laugh here at his thrift, but after all
     It may be thrift that saves him from the devil;
     God gave it, anyhow,—and we'll suppose
     He knew the compound of his handiwork.
     To-day the clouds are with him, but anon
     He'll out of 'em enough to shake the tree
     Of life itself and bring down fruit unheard-of,—
     And, throwing in the bruised and whole together,
     Prepare a wine to make us drunk with wonder;
     And if he live, there'll be a sunset spell
     Thrown over him as over a glassed lake
     That yesterday was all a black wild water.

     God send he live to give us, if no more,
     What now's a-rampage in him, and exhibit,
     With a decent half-allegiance to the ages
     An earnest of at least a casual eye
     Turned once on what he owes to Gutenberg,
     And to the fealty of more centuries
     Than are as yet a picture in our vision.
     "There's time enough,—I'll do it when I'm old,
     And we're immortal men," he says to that;
     And then he says to me, "Ben, what's 'immortal'?
     Think you by any force of ordination
     It may be nothing of a sort more noisy
     Than a small oblivion of component ashes
     That of a dream-addicted world was once
     A moving atomy much like your friend here?"
     Nothing will help that man.  To make him laugh,
     I said then he was a mad mountebank,—
     And by the Lord I nearer made him cry.
     I could have eat an eft then, on my knees,
     Tail, claws, and all of him; for I had stung
     The king of men, who had no sting for me,
     And I had hurt him in his memories;
     And I say now, as I shall say again,
     I love the man this side idolatry.

     He'll do it when he's old, he says.  I wonder.
     He may not be so ancient as all that.
     For such as he, the thing that is to do
     Will do itself,—but there's a reckoning;
     The sessions that are now too much his own,
     The roiling inward of a stilled outside,
     The churning out of all those blood-fed lines,
     The nights of many schemes and little sleep,
     The full brain hammered hot with too much thinking,
     The vexed heart over-worn with too much aching,—
     This weary jangling of conjoined affairs
     Made out of elements that have no end,
     And all confused at once, I understand,
     Is not what makes a man to live forever.
     O no, not now!  He'll not be going now:
     There'll be time yet for God knows what explosions
     Before he goes.  He'll stay awhile.  Just wait:
     Just wait a year or two for Cleopatra,
     For she's to be a balsam and a comfort;
     And that's not all a jape of mine now, either.
     For granted once the old way of Apollo
     Sings in a man, he may then, if he's able,
     Strike unafraid whatever strings he will
     Upon the last and wildest of new lyres;
     Nor out of his new magic, though it hymn
     The shrieks of dungeoned hell, shall he create
     A madness or a gloom to shut quite out
     A cleaving daylight, and a last great calm
     Triumphant over shipwreck and all storms.
     He might have given Aristotle creeps,
     But surely would have given him his 'katharsis'.

     He'll not be going yet.  There's too much yet
     Unsung within the man.  But when he goes,
     I'd stake ye coin o' the realm his only care
     For a phantom world he sounded and found wanting
     Will be a portion here, a portion there,
     Of this or that thing or some other thing
     That has a patent and intrinsical
     Equivalence in those egregious shillings.
     And yet he knows, God help him!  Tell me, now,
     If ever there was anything let loose
     On earth by gods or devils heretofore
     Like this mad, careful, proud, indifferent Shakespeare!
     Where was it, if it ever was?  By heaven,
     'Twas never yet in Rhodes or Pergamon—
     In Thebes or Nineveh, a thing like this!
     No thing like this was ever out of England;
     And that he knows.  I wonder if he cares.
     Perhaps he does....  O Lord, that House in Stratford!