VII. The Three Taverns   
22. The Rat   
     
AS often as he let himself be seen      
We pitied him, or scorned him, or deplored      
The inscrutable profusion of the Lord      
Who shaped as one of us a thing so mean—      
Who made him human when he might have been           5   
A rat, and so been wholly in accord      
With any other creature we abhorred      
As always useless and not always clean.      
   
Now he is hiding all alone somewhere,      
And in a final hole not ready then;          10   
For now he is among those over there      
Who are not coming back to us again.      
And we who do the fiction of our share      
Say less of rats and rather more of men

VII. The Three Taverns   
23. Rahel to Varnhagen   
     
  NOTE.—Rahel Robert and Varnhagen von Ense were married, after many protestations on her part, in 1814. The marriage—so far as he was concerned at any rate—appears to have been satisfactory.

NOW you have read them all; or if not all,      
As many as in all conscience I should fancy      
To be enough. There are no more of them—      
Or none to burn your sleep, or to bring dreams      
Of devils. If these are not sufficient, surely           5   
You are a strange young man. I might live on      
Alone, and for another forty years,      
Or not quite forty,—are you happier now?—      
Always to ask if there prevailed elsewhere      
Another like yourself that would have held          10   
These aged hands as long as you have held them,      
Not once observing, for all I can see,      
How they are like your mother’s. Well, you have read      
His letters now, and you have heard me say      
That in them are the cinders of a passion          15   
That was my life; and you have not yet broken      
Your way out of my house, out of my sight,—      
Into the street. You are a strange young man.      
I know as much as that of you, for certain;      
And I’m already praying, for your sake,          20   
That you be not too strange. Too much of that      
May lead you bye and bye through gloomy lanes      
To a sad wilderness, where one may grope      
Alone, and always, or until he feels      
Ferocious and invisible animals          25   
That wait for men and eat them in the dark.      
Why do you sit there on the floor so long,      
Smiling at me while I try to be solemn?      
Do you not hear it said for your salvation,      
When I say truth? Are you, at four and twenty,          30   
So little deceived in us that you interpret      
The humor of a woman to be noticed      
As her choice between you and Acheron?      
Are you so unscathed yet as to infer      
That if a woman worries when a man,          35   
Or a man-child, has wet shoes on his feet      
She may as well commemorate with ashes      
The last eclipse of her tranquillity?      
If you look up at me and blink again,      
I shall not have to make you tell me lies          40   
To know the letters you have not been reading      
I see now that I may have had for nothing      
A most unpleasant shivering in my conscience      
When I laid open for your contemplation      
The wealth of my worn casket. If I did,          45   
The fault was not yours wholly. Search again      
This wreckage we may call for sport a face,      
And you may chance upon the price of havoc      
That I have paid for a few sorry stones      
That shine and have no light—yet once were stars,          50   
And sparkled on a crown. Little and weak      
They seem; and they are cold, I fear, for you.      
But they that once were fire for me may not      
Be cold again for me until I die;      
And only God knows if they may be then.          55   
There is a love that ceases to be love      
In being ourselves. How, then, are we to lose it?      
You that are sure that you know everything      
There is to know of love, answer me that.      
Well?… You are not even interested.          60   
   
Once on a far off time when I was young,      
I felt with your assurance, and all through me,      
That I had undergone the last and worst      
Of love’s inventions. There was a boy who brought      
The sun with him and woke me up with it,          65   
And that was every morning; every night      
I tried to dream of him, but never could,      
More than I might have seen in Adam’s eyes      
Their fond uncertainty when Eve began      
The play that all her tireless progeny          70   
Are not yet weary of. One scene of it      
Was brief, but was eternal while it lasted;      
And that was while I was the happiest      
Of an imaginary six or seven,      
Somewhere in history but not on earth,          75   
For whom the sky had shaken and let stars      
Rain down like diamonds. Then there were clouds,      
And a sad end of diamonds; whereupon      
Despair came, like a blast that would have brought      
Tears to the eyes of all the bears in Finland,          80   
And love was done. That was how much I knew.      
Poor little wretch! I wonder where he is      
This afternoon. Out of this rain, I hope.      
   
At last, when I had seen so many days      
Dressed all alike, and in their marching order,          85   
Go by me that I would not always count them,      
One stopped—shattering the whole file of Time,      
Or so it seemed; and when I looked again,      
There was a man. He struck once with his eyes,      
And then there was a woman. I, who had come          90   
To wisdom, or to vision, or what you like,      
By the old hidden road that has no name,—      
I, who was used to seeing without flying      
So much that others fly from without seeing,      
Still looked, and was afraid, and looked again.          95   
And after that, when I had read the story      
Told in his eyes, and felt within my heart      
The bleeding wound of their necessity,      
I knew the fear was his. If I had failed him      
And flown away from him, I should have lost         100   
Ingloriously my wings in scrambling back,      
And found them arms again. If he had struck me      
Not only with his eyes but with his hands,      
I might have pitied him and hated love,      
And then gone mad. I, who have been so strong—         105   
Why don’t you laugh?—might even have done all that.      
I, who have learned so much, and said so much,      
And had the commendations of the great      
For one who rules herself—why don’t you cry?—      
And own a certain small authority         110   
Among the blind, who see no more than ever,      
But like my voice,—I would have tossed it all      
To Tophet for one man; and he was jealous.      
I would have wound a snake around my neck      
And then have let it bite me till I died,         115   
If my so doing would have made me sure      
That one man might have lived; and he was jealous.      
I would have driven these hands into a cage      
That held a thousand scorpions, and crushed them,      
If only by so poisonous a trial         120   
I could have crushed his doubt. I would have wrung      
My living blood with mediaeval engines      
Out of my screaming flesh, if only that      
Would have made one man sure. I would have paid      
For him the tiresome price of body and soul,         125   
And let the lash of a tongue-weary town      
Fall as it might upon my blistered name;      
And while it fell I could have laughed at it,      
Knowing that he had found out finally      
Where the wrong was. But there was evil in him         130   
That would have made no more of his possession      
Than confirmation of another fault;      
And there was honor—if you call it honor      
That hoods itself with doubt and wears a crown      
Of lead that might as well be gold and fire.         135   
Give it as heavy or as light a name      
As any there is that fits. I see myself      
Without the power to swear to this or that      
That I might be if he had been without it.      
Whatever I might have been that I was not,         140   
It only happened that it wasn’t so.      
Meanwhile, you might seem to be listening:      
If you forget yourself and go to sleep,      
My treasure, I shall not say this again.      
Look up once more into my poor old face,         145   
Where you see beauty, or the Lord knows what,      
And say to me aloud what else there is      
Than ruins in it that you most admire.      
   
No, there was never anything like that;      
Nature has never fastened such a mask         150   
Of radiant and impenetrable merit      
On any woman as you say there is      
On this one. Not a mask? I thank you, sir,      
But you see more with your determination,      
I fear, than with your prudence or your conscience;         155   
And you have never met me with my eyes      
In all the mirrors I’ve made faces at.      
No, I shall never call you strange again:      
You are the young and inconvincible      
Epitome of all blind men since Adam.         160   
May the blind lead the blind, if that be so?      
And we shall need no mirrors? You are saying      
What most I feared you might. But if the blind,      
Or one of them, be not so fortunate      
As to put out the eyes of recollection,         165   
She might at last, without her meaning it,      
Lead on the other, without his knowing it,      
Until the two of them should lose themselves      
Among dead craters in a lava-field      
As empty as a desert on the moon.         170   
I am not speaking in a theatre,      
But in a room so real and so familiar      
That sometimes I would wreck it. Then I pause,      
Remembering there is a King in Weimar—      
A monarch, and a poet, and a shepherd         175   
Of all who are astray and are outside      
The realm where they should rule. I think of him,      
And save the furniture; I think of you,      
And am forlorn, finding in you the one      
To lavish aspirations and illusions         180   
Upon a faded and forsaken house      
Where love, being locked alone, was nigh to burning      
House and himself together. Yes, you are strange,      
To see in such an injured architecture      
Room for new love to live in. Are you laughing?         185   
No? Well, you are not crying, as you should be.      
Tears, even if they told only gratitude      
For your escape, and had no other story,      
Were surely more becoming than a smile      
For my unwomanly straightforwardness         190   
In seeing for you, through my close gate of years      
Your forty ways to freedom. Why do you smile?      
And while I’m trembling at my faith in you      
In giving you to read this book of danger      
That only one man living might have written—         195   
These letters, which have been a part of me      
So long that you may read them all again      
As often as you look into my face,      
And hear them when I speak to you, and feel them      
Whenever you have to touch me with your hand,—         200   
Why are you so unwilling to be spared?      
Why do you still believe in me? But no,      
I’ll find another way to ask you that.      
I wonder if there is another way      
That says it better, and means anything.         205   
There is no other way that could be worse?      
I was not asking you; it was myself      
Alone that I was asking. Why do I dip      
For lies, when there is nothing in my well      
But shining truth, you say? How do you know?         210   
Truth has a lonely life down where she lives;      
And many a time, when she comes up to breathe,      
She sinks before we seize her, and makes ripples.      
Possibly you may know no more of me      
Than a few ripples; and they may soon be gone,         215   
Leaving you then with all my shining truth      
Drowned in a shining water; and when you look      
You may not see me there, but something else      
That never was a woman—being yourself.      
You say to me my truth is past all drowning,         220   
And safe with you for ever? You know all that?      
How do you know all that, and who has told you?      
You know so much that I’m an atom frightened      
Because you know so little. And what is this?      
You know the luxury there is in haunting         225   
The blasted thoroughfares of disillusion—      
If that’s your name for them—with only ghosts      
For company? You know that when a woman      
Is blessed, or cursed, with a divine impatience      
(Another name of yours for a bad temper)         230   
She must have one at hand on whom to wreak it      
(That’s what you mean, whatever the turn you give it),      
Sure of a kindred sympathy, and thereby      
Effect a mutual calm? You know that wisdom,      
Given in vain to make a food for those         235   
Who are without it, will be seen at last,      
And even at last only by those who gave it,      
As one or more of the forgotten crumbs      
That others leave? You know that men’s applause      
And women’s envy savor so much of dust         240   
That I go hungry, having at home no fare      
But the same changeless bread that I may swallow      
Only with tears and prayers? Who told you that?      
You know that if I read, and read alone,      
Too many books that no men yet have written,         245   
I may go blind, or worse? You know yourself,      
Of all insistent and insidious creatures,      
To be the one to save me, and to guard      
For me their flaming language? And you know      
That if I give much headway to the whim         250   
That’s in me never to be quite sure that even      
Through all those years of storm and fire I waited      
For this one rainy day, I may go on,      
And on, and on alone, through smoke and ashes,      
To a cold end? You know so dismal much         255   
As that about me?… Well, I believe you do.

VII. The Three Taverns   
24. Nimmo   
     
SINCE you remember Nimmo, and arrive      
At such a false and florid and far drawn      
Confusion of odd nonsense, I connive      
No longer, though I may have led you on.      
   
So much is told and heard and told again,           5   
So many with his legend are engrossed,      
That I, more sorry now than I was then,      
May live on to be sorry for his ghost.      
   
You knew him, and you must have known his eyes,—      
How deep they were, and what a velvet light          10   
Came out of them when anger or surprise,      
Or laughter, or Francesca, made them bright.      
   
No, you will not forget such eyes, I think,—      
And you say nothing of them. Very well.      
I wonder if all history’s worth a wink,          15   
Sometimes, or if my tale be one to tell.      
   
For they began to lose their velvet light;      
Their fire grew dead without and small within;      
And many of you deplored the needless fight      
That somewhere in the dark there must have been.          20   
   
All fights are needless, when they’re not our own,      
But Nimmo and Francesca never fought.      
Remember that; and when you are alone,      
Remember me—and think what I have thought.      
   
Now, mind you, I say nothing of what was,          25   
Or never was, or could or could not be:      
Bring not suspicion’s candle to the glass      
That mirrors a friend’s face to memory.      
   
Of what you see, see all,—but see no more;      
For what I show you here will not be there.          30   
The devil has had his way with paint before,      
And he’s an artist,—and you needn’t stare.      
   
There was a painter and he painted well:      
He’d paint you Daniel in the lion’s den,      
Beelzebub, Elaine, or William Tell.          35   
I’m coming back to Nimmo’s eyes again.      
   
The painter put the devil in those eyes,      
Unless the devil did, and there he stayed;      
And then the lady fled from paradise,      
And there’s your fact. The lady was afraid.          40   
   
She must have been afraid, or may have been,      
Of evil in their velvet all the while;      
But sure as I’m a sinner with a skin,      
I’ll trust the man as long as he can smile.      
   
I trust him who can smile and then may live          45   
In my heart’s house, where Nimmo is today.      
God knows if I have more than men forgive      
To tell him; but I played, and I shall pay.      
   
I knew him then, and if I know him yet,      
I know in him, defeated and estranged,          50   
The calm of men forbidden to forget      
The calm of women who have loved and changed.      
   
But there are ways that are beyond our ways,      
Or he would not be calm and she be mute,      
As one by one their lost and empty days          55   
Pass without even the warmth of a dispute.      
   
God help us all when women think they see;      
God save us when they do. I’m fair; but though      
I know him only as he looks to me,      
I know him,—and I tell Francesca so.          60   
   
And what of Nimmo? Little would you ask      
Of him, could you but see him as I can,      
At his bewildered and unfruitful task      
Of being what he was born to be—a man.      
   
Better forget that I said anything          65   
Of what your tortured memory may disclose;      
I know him, and your worst remembering      
Would count as much as nothing, I suppose.      
   
Meanwhile, I trust him; and I know his way      
Of trusting me, and always in his youth.          70   
I’m painting here a better man, you say,      
Than I, the painter; and you say the truth.

VII. The Three Taverns   
25. Peace on Earth   
     
HE took a frayed hat from his head,      
And “Peace on Earth” was what he said.      
“A morsel out of what you’re worth,      
And there we have it: Peace on Earth.      
Not much, although a little more           5   
Than what there was on earth before      
I’m as you see, I’m Ichabod,—      
But never mind the ways I’ve trod;      
I’m sober now, so help me God.”      
   
I could not pass the fellow by.          10   
“Do you believe in God?” said I;      
“And is there to be Peace on Earth?”      
   
“Tonight we celebrate the birth,”      
He said, “of One who died for men;      
The Son of God, we say. What then?          15   
Your God, or mine? I’d make you laugh      
Were I to tell you even half      
That I have learned of mine today      
Where yours would hardly seem to stay.      
Could He but follow in and out          20   
Some anthropoids I know about,      
The god to whom you may have prayed      
Might see a world He never made.”      
   
“Your words are flowing full,” said I;      
“But yet they give me no reply;          25   
Your fountain might as well be dry.”      
   
“A wiser One than you, my friend,      
Would wait and hear me to the end;      
And for his eyes a light would shine      
Through this unpleasant shell of mine          30   
That in your fancy makes of me      
A Christmas curiosity.      
All right, I might be worse than that;      
And you might now be lying flat;      
I might have done it from behind,          35   
And taken what there was to find.      
Don’t worry, for I’m not that kind.      
‘Do I believe in God?’ Is that      
The price tonight of a new hat?      
Has he commanded that his name          40   
Be written everywhere the same?      
Have all who live in every place      
Identified his hidden face?      
Who knows but he may like as well      
My story as one you may tell?          45   
And if he show me there be Peace      
On Earth, as there be fields and trees      
Outside a jail-yard, am I wrong      
If now I sing him a new song?      
Your world is in yourself, my friend,          50   
For your endurance to the end;      
And all the Peace there is on Earth      
Is faith in what your world is worth,      
And saying, without any lies,      
Your world could not be otherwise.”          55   
   
“One might say that and then be shot,”      
I told him; and he said: “Why not?”      
I ceased, and gave him rather more      
Than he was counting of my store.      
“And since I have it, thanks to you,          60   
Don’t ask me what I mean to do,”      
Said he. “Believe that even I      
Would rather tell the truth than lie—      
On Christmas Eve. No matter why.”      
   
His unshaved, educated face,          65   
His inextinguishable grace.      
And his hard smile, are with me still,      
Deplore the vision as I will;      
For whatsoever he be at,      
So droll a derelict as that          70   
Should have at least another hat.

VII. The Three Taverns   
26. Late Summer   
     
(ALCAICS)


CONFUSED, he found her lavishing feminine      
Gold upon clay, and found her inscrutable;      
  And yet she smiled. Why, then, should horrors      
Be as they were, without end, her playthings?      
   
And why were dead years hungrily telling her           5   
Lies of the dead, who told them again to her?      
  If now she knew, there might be kindness      
Clamoring yet where a faith lay stifled.      
   
A little faith in him, and the ruinous      
Past would be for time to annihilate,          10   
  And wash out, like a tide that washes      
Out of the sand what a child has drawn there.      
   
God, what a shining handful of happiness,      
Made out of days and out of eternities,      
  Were now the pulsing end of patience—          15   
Could he but have what a ghost had stolen!      
   
What was a man before him, or ten of them,      
While he was here alive who could answer them,      
  And in their teeth fling confirmations      
Harder than agates against an egg-shell?          20   
   
But now the man was dead, and would come again      
Never, though she might honor ineffably      
  The flimsy wraith of him she conjured      
Out of a dream with his wand of absence.      
   
And if the truth were now but a mummery,          25   
Meriting pride’s implacable irony,      
  So much the worse for pride. Moreover,      
Save her or fail, there was conscience always.      
   
Meanwhile, a few misgivings of innocence,      
Imploring to be sheltered and credited,          30   
  Were not amiss when she revealed them.      
Whether she struggled or not, he saw them.      
   
Also, he saw that while she was hearing him      
Her eyes had more and more of the past in them;      
  And while he told what cautious honor          35   
Told him was all he had best be sure of,      
   
He wondered once or twice, inadvertently,      
Where shifting winds were driving his argosies,      
  Long anchored and as long unladen,      
Over the foam for the golden chances.          40   
   
“If men were not for killing so carelessly,      
And women were for wiser endurances,”      
  He said, “we might have yet a world here      
Fitter for Truth to be seen abroad in;      
   
“If Truth were not so strange in her nakedness,          45   
And we were less forbidden to look at it,      
  We might not have to look.” He stared then      
Down at the sand where the tide threw forward      
   
Its cold, unconquered lines, that unceasingly      
Foamed against hope, and fell. He was calm enough,          50   
  Although he knew he might be silenced      
Out of all calm; and the night was coming.      
   
“I climb for you the peak of his infamy      
That you may choose your fall if you cling to it.      
  No more for me unless you say more.          55   
All you have left of a dream defends you:      
   
“The truth may be as evil an augury      
As it was needful now for the two of us.      
  We cannot have the dead between us.      
Tell me to go, and I go.”—She pondered:          60   
   
“What you believe is right for the two of us      
Makes it as right that you are not one of us.      
  If this be needful truth you tell me,      
Spare me, and let me have lies hereafter.”      
   
She gazed away where shadows were covering          65   
The whole cold ocean’s healing indifference.      
  No ship was coming. When the darkness      
Fell, she was there, and alone, still gazing.

VII. The Three Taverns   
27. An Evangelist’s Wife   
     
“WHY am I not myself these many days,      
You ask? And have you nothing more to ask?      
I do you wrong? I do not hear your praise      
To God for giving you me to share your task?      
   
“Jealous—of Her? Because her cheeks are pink,           5   
And she has eyes? No, not if she had seven.      
If you should only steal an hour to think,      
Sometime, there might be less to be forgiven.      
   
“No, you are never cruel. If once or twice      
I found you so, I could applaud and sing.          10   
Jealous of—What? You are not very wise.      
Does not the good Book tell you anything?      
   
“In David’s time poor Michal had to go.      
Jealous of God? Well, if you like it so.”

   
VII. The Three Taverns   
28. The Old King’s New Jester   
     
YOU that in vain would front the coming order      
With eyes that meet forlornly what they must,      
And only with a furtive recognition      
See dust where there is dust,—      
Be sure you like it always in your faces,           5   
Obscuring your best graces,      
Blinding your speech and sight,      
Before you seek again your dusty places      
Where the old wrong seems right.      
   
Longer ago than cave-men had their changes          10   
Our fathers may have slain a son o two,      
Discouraging a further dialectic      
Regarding what was new;      
And after their unstudied admonition      
Occasional contrition          15   
For their old-fashioned ways      
May have reduced their doubts, and in addition      
Softened their final days.      
   
Farther away than feet shall ever travel.      
Are the vague towers of our unbuilded State;          20   
But there are mightier things than we to lead us,      
That will not let us wait.      
And we go on with none to tell us whether      
Or not we’ve each a tether      
Determining how fast or how far we go;          25   
And it is well, since we must go together,      
That we are not to know.      
   
If the old wrong and all its injured glamour      
Haunts you by day and gives your night no peace,      
You may as well, agreeably and serenely,          30   
Give the new wrong its lease;      
For should you nourish a too fervid yearning      
For what is not returning,      
The vicious and unfused ingredient      
May give you qualms—and one or two concerning          35   
The last of your content.

VII. The Three Taverns   
29. Lazarus   
     
“NO, Mary, there was nothing—not a word.      
Nothing, and always nothing. Go again      
Yourself, and he may listen—or at least      
Look up at you, and let you see his eyes.      
I might as well have been the sound of rain,           5   
A wind among the cedars, or a bird;      
Or nothing. Mary, make him look at you;      
And even if he should say that we are nothing,      
To know that you have heard him will be something.      
And yet he loved us, and it was for love          10   
The Master gave him back. Why did he wait      
So long before he came? Why did he weep?      
I thought he would be glad—and Lazarus—      
To see us all again as he had left us—      
All as it was, all as it was before.”          15   
   
Mary, who felt her sister’s frightened arms      
Like those of someone drowning who had seized her,      
Fearing at last they were to fail and sink      
Together in this fog-stricken sea of strangeness,      
Fought sadly, with bereaved indignant eyes,          20   
To find again the fading shores of home      
That she had seen but now could see no longer      
Now she could only gaze into the twilight,      
And in the dimness know that he was there,      
Like someone that was not. He who had been          25   
Their brother, and was dead, now seemed alive      
Only in death again—or worse than death;      
For tombs at least, always until today,      
Though sad were certain. There was nothing certain      
For man or God in such a day as this;          30   
For there they were alone, and there was he—      
Alone; and somewhere out of Bethany,      
The Master—who had come to them so late,      
Only for love of them and then so slowly,      
And was for their sake hunted now by men          35   
Who feared Him as they feared no other prey—      
For the world’s sake was hidden. “Better the tomb      
For Lazarus than life, if this be life,”      
She thought; and then to Martha, “No, my dear,”      
She said aloud; “not as it was before.          40   
Nothing is ever as it was before,      
Where Time has been. Here there is more than Time;      
And we that are so lonely and so far      
From home, since he is with us here again,      
Are farther now from him and from ourselves          45   
Than we are from the stars. He will not speak      
Until the spirit that is in him speaks;      
And we must wait for all we are to know,      
Or even to learn that we are not to know.      
Martha, we are too near to this for knowledge,          50   
And that is why it is that we must wait.      
Our friends are coming if we call for them,      
And there are covers we’ll put over him      
To make him warmer. We are too young, perhaps,      
To say that we know better what is best          55   
Than he. We do not know how old he is.      
If you remember what the Master said,      
Try to believe that we need have no fear.      
Let me, the selfish and the careless one,      
Be housewife and a mother for tonight;          60   
For I am not so fearful as you are,      
And I was not so eager.”      
   
        Martha sank      
Down at her sister’s feet and there sat watching      
A flower that had a small familiar name          65   
That was as old as memory, but was not      
The name of what she saw now in its brief      
And infinite mystery that so frightened her      
That life became a terror. Tears again      
Flooded her eyes and overflowed. “No, Mary,”          70   
She murmured slowly, hating her own words      
Before she heard them, “you are not so eager      
To see our brother as we see him now;      
Neither is he who gave him back to us.      
I was to be the simple one, as always,          75   
And this was all for me.” She stared again      
Over among the trees where Lazarus,      
Who seemed to be a man who was not there,      
Might have been one more shadow among shadows,      
If she had not remembered. Then she felt          80   
The cool calm hands of Mary on her face,      
And shivered, wondering if such hands were real.      
   
“The Master loved you as he loved us all,      
Martha; and you are saying only things      
That children say when they have had no sleep.          85   
Try somehow now to rest a little while;      
You know that I am here, and that our friends      
Are coming if I call.”      
   
        Martha at last      
Arose, and went with Mary to the door,          90   
Where they stood looking off at the same place,      
And at the same shape that was always there      
As if it would not ever move or speak,      
And always would be there. “Mary, go now,      
Before the dark that will be coming hides him.          95   
I am afraid of him out there alone,      
Unless I see him; and I have forgotten      
What sleep is. Go now—make him look at you—      
And I shall hear him if he stirs or whispers.      
Go!—or I’ll scream and bring all Bethany         100   
To come and make him speak. Make him say once      
That he is glad, and God may say the rest.      
Though He say I shall sleep, and sleep for ever,      
I shall not care for that… Go!”      
   
        Mary, moving         105   
Almost as if an angry child had pushed her,      
Went forward a few steps; and having waited      
As long as Martha’s eyes would look at hers,      
Went forward a few more, and a few more;      
And so, until she came to Lazarus,         110   
Who crouched with his face hidden in his hands,      
Like one that had no face. Before she spoke,      
Feeling her sister’s eyes that were behind her      
As if the door where Martha stood were now      
As far from her as Egypt, Mary turned         115   
Once more to see that she was there. Then, softly,      
Fearing him not so much as wondering      
What his first word might be, said, “Lazarus,      
Forgive us if we seemed afraid of you;”      
And having spoken, pitied her poor speech         120   
That had so little seeming gladness in it,      
So little comfort, and so little love.      
   
There was no sign from him that he had heard,      
Or that he knew that she was there, or cared      
Whether she spoke to him again or died         125   
There at his feet. “We love you, Lazarus,      
And we are not afraid. The Master said      
We need not be afraid. Will you not say      
To me that you are glad? Look, Lazarus!      
Look at my face, and see me. This is Mary.”         130   
She found his hands and held them. They were cool,      
Like hers, but they were not so calm as hers.      
Through the white robes in which his friends had wrapped him      
When he had groped out of that awful sleep,      
She felt him trembling and she was afraid.         135   
At last he sighed; and she prayed hungrily      
To God that she might hear again the voice      
Of Lazarus, whose hands were giving her now      
The recognition of a living pressure      
That was almost a language. When he spoke,         140   
Only one word that she had waited for      
Came from his lips, and that word was her name.      
   
“I heard them saying, Mary, that he wept      
Before I woke.” The words were low and shaken,      
Yet Mary knew that he who uttered them         145   
Was Lazarus; and that would be enough      
Until there should be more… “Who made him come,      
That he should weep for me?… Was it you, Mary?”      
The questions held in his incredulous eyes      
Were more than she would see. She looked away;         150   
But she had felt them and should feel for ever,      
She thought, their cold and lonely desperation      
That had the bitterness of all cold things      
That were not cruel. “I should have wept,” he said,      
“If I had been the Master….”         155   
   
        Now she could feel      
His hands above her hair—the same black hair      
That once he made a jest of, praising it,      
While Martha’s busy eyes had left their work      
To flash with laughing envy. Nothing of that         160   
Was to be theirs again; and such a thought      
Was like the flying by of a quick bird      
Seen through a shadowy doorway in the twilight.      
For now she felt his hands upon her head,      
Like weights of kindness: “I forgive you, Mary….         165   
You did not know—Martha could not have known—      
Only the Master knew…. Where is he now?      
Yes, I remember. They came after him.      
May the good God forgive him…. I forgive him.      
I must; and I may know only from him         170   
The burden of all this… Martha was here—      
But I was not yet here. She was afraid….      
Why did he do it, Mary? Was it—you?      
Was it for you?… Where are the friends I saw?      
Yes, I remember. They all went away.         175   
I made them go away…. Where is he now?…      
What do I see down there? Do I see Martha—      
Down by the door?… I must have time for this.”      
   
Lazarus looked about him fearfully,      
And then again at Mary, who discovered         180   
Awakening apprehension in his eyes,      
And shivered at his feet. All she had feared      
Was here; and only in the slow reproach      
Of his forgiveness lived his gratitude.      
Why had he asked if it was all for her         185   
That he was here? And what had Martha meant?      
Why had the Master waited? What was coming      
To Lazarus, and to them, that had not come?      
What had the Master seen before he came,      
That he had come so late?         190   
   
        “Where is he, Mary?”      
Lazarus asked again. “Where did he go?”      
Once more he gazed about him, and once more      
At Mary for an answer. “Have they found him?      
Or did he go away because he wished         195   
Never to look into my eyes again?…      
That, I could understand…. Where is he, Mary?”      
   
“I do not know,” she said. “Yet in my heart      
I know that he is living, as you are living—      
Living, and here. He is not far from us.         200   
He will come back to us and find us all—      
Lazarus, Martha, Mary—everything—      
All as it was before. Martha said that.      
And he said we were not to be afraid.”      
Lazarus closed his eyes while on his face         205   
A tortured adumbration of a smile      
Flickered an instant. “All as it was before,”      
He murmured wearily. “Martha said that;      
And he said you were not to be afraid …      
Not you… Not you… Why should you be afraid?         210   
Give all your little fears, and Martha’s with them,      
To me; and I will add them unto mine,      
Like a few rain-drops to Gennesaret.”      
   
“If you had frightened me in other ways,      
Not willing it,” Mary said, “I should have known         215   
You still for Lazarus. But who is this?      
Tell me again that you are Lazarus;      
And tell me if the Master gave to you      
No sign of a new joy that shall be coming      
To this house that he loved. Are you afraid?         220   
Are you afraid, who have felt everything—      
And seen…?”      
   
        But Lazarus only shook his head,      
Staring with his bewildered shining eyes      
Hard into Mary’s face. “I do not know,         225   
Mary,” he said, after a long time.      
“When I came back, I knew the Master’s eyes      
Were looking into mine. I looked at his,      
And there was more in them than I could see.      
At first I could see nothing but his eyes;         230   
Nothing else anywhere was to be seen—      
Only his eyes. And they looked into mine—      
Long into mine, Mary, as if he knew.”      
   
Mary began to be afraid of words      
As she had never been afraid before         235   
Of loneliness or darkness, or of death,      
But now she must have more of them or die:      
“He cannot know that there is worse than death,”      
She said. “And you…”      
   
        “Yes, there is worse than death.”         240   
Said Lazarus; “and that was what he knew;      
And that is what it was that I could see      
This morning in his eyes. I was afraid,      
But not as you are. There is worse than death,      
Mary; and there is nothing that is good         245   
For you in dying while you are still here.      
Mary, never go back to that again.      
You would not hear me if I told you more,      
For I should say it only in a language      
That you are not to learn by going back.         250   
To be a child again is to go forward—      
And that is much to know. Many grow old,      
And fade, and go away, not knowing how much      
That is to know. Mary, the night is coming,      
And there will soon be darkness all around you.         255   
Let us go down where Martha waits for us,      
And let there be light shining in this house.”      
   
He rose, but Mary would not let him go:      
“Martha, when she came back from here, said only      
That she heard nothing. And have you no more         260   
For Mary now than you had then for Martha?      
Is Nothing, Lazarus, all you have for me?      
Was Nothing all you found where you have been?      
If that be so, what is there worse than that—      
Or better—if that be so? And why should you,         265   
With even our love, go the same dark road over?”      
   
“I could not answer that, if that were so,”      
Said Lazarus,—“not even if I were God.      
Why should He care whether I came or stayed,      
If that were so? Why should the Master weep—         270   
For me, or for the world,—or save himself      
Longer for nothing? And if that were so,      
Why should a few years’ more mortality      
Make him a fugitive where flight were needless,      
Had he but held his peace and given his nod         275   
To an old Law that would be new as any?      
I cannot say the answer to all that;      
Though I may say that he is not afraid,      
And that it is not for the joy there is      
In serving an eternal Ignorance         280   
Of our futility that he is here.      
Is that what you and Martha mean by Nothing?      
Is that what you are fearing? If that be so,      
There are more weeds than lentils in your garden.      
And one whose weeds are laughing at his harvest         285   
May as well have no garden; for not there      
Shall he be gleaning the few bits and orts      
Of life that are to save him. For my part,      
I am again with you, here among shadows      
That will not always be so dark as this;         290   
Though now I see there’s yet an evil in me      
That made me let you be afraid of me.      
No, I was not afraid—not even of life.      
I thought I was…I must have time for this;      
And all the time there is will not be long.         295   
I cannot tell you what the Master saw      
This morning in my eyes. I do not know.      
I cannot yet say how far I have gone,      
Or why it is that I am here again,      
Or where the old road leads. I do not know.         300   
I know that when I did come back, I saw      
His eyes again among the trees and faces—      
Only his eyes; and they looked into mine—      
Long into mine—long, long, as if he knew.”

VIII. Avon’s Harvest, Etc.   
1. Avon’s Harvest   
     
FEAR, like a living fire that only death      
Might one day cool, had now in Avon’s eyes      
Been witness for so long of an invasion      
That made of a gay friend whom we had known      
Almost a memory, wore no other name           5   
As yet for us than fear. Another man      
Than Avon might have given to us at least      
A futile opportunity for words      
We might regret. But Avon, since it happened,      
Fed with his unrevealing reticence          10   
The fire of death we saw that horribly      
Consumed him while he crumbled and said nothing.      
   
So many a time had I been on the edge,      
And off again, of a foremeasured fall      
Into the darkness and discomfiture          15   
Of his oblique rebuff, that finally      
My silence honored his, holding itself      
Away from a gratuitous intrusion      
That likely would have widened a new distance      
Already wide enough, if not so new.          20   
But there are seeming parallels in space      
That may converge in time; and so it was      
I walked with Avon, fought and pondered with him,      
While he made out a case for So-and-so,      
Or slaughtered What’s-his-name in his old way,          25   
With a new difference. Nothing in Avon lately      
Was, or was ever again to be for us,      
Like him that we remembered; and all the while      
We saw that fire at work within his eyes      
And had no glimpse of what was burning there.          30   
   
So for a year it went; and so it went      
For half another year—when, all at once,      
At someone’s tinkling afternoon at home      
I saw that in the eyes of Avon’s wife      
The fire that I had met the day before          35   
In his had found another living fuel.      
To look at her and then to think of him,      
And thereupon to contemplate the fall      
Of a dim curtain over the dark end      
Of a dark play, required of me no more          40   
Clairvoyance than a man who cannot swim      
Will exercise in seeing that his friend      
Off shore will drown except he save himself.      
To her I could say nothing, and to him      
No more than tallied with a long belief          45   
That I should only have it back again      
For my chagrin to ruminate upon,      
Ingloriously, for the still time it starved;      
And that would be for me as long a time      
As I remembered Avon—who is yet          50   
Not quite forgotten. On the other hand,      
For saying nothing I might have with me always      
An injured and recriminating ghost      
Of a dead friend. The more I pondered it      
The more I knew there was not much to lose,          55   
Albeit for one whose delving hitherto      
Had been a forage of his own affairs,      
The quest, however golden the reward,      
Was irksome—and as Avon suddenly      
And soon was driven to let me see, was needless.          60   
It seemed an age ago that we were there      
One evening in the room that in the days      
When they could laugh he called the Library.      
“He calls it that, you understand,” she said,      
“Because the dictionary always lives here.          65   
He’s not a man of books, yet he can read,      
And write. He learned it all at school.”—He smiled,      
And answered with a fervor that rang then      
Superfluous: “Had I learned a little more      
At school, it might have been as well for me.”          70   
And I remember now that he paused then,      
Leaving a silence that one had to break.      
But this was long ago, and there was now      
No laughing in that house. We were alone      
This time, and it was Avon’s time to talk.          75   
   
I waited, and anon became aware      
That I was looking less at Avon’s eyes      
Than at the dictionary, like one asking      
Already why we make so much of words      
That have so little weight in the true balance.          80   
“Your name is Resignation for an hour,”      
He said; “and I’m a little sorry for you.      
So be resigned. I shall not praise your work,      
Or strive in any way to make you happy.      
My purpose only is to make you know          85   
How clearly I have known that you have known      
There was a reason waited on your coming,      
And, if it’s in me to see clear enough,      
To fish the reason out of a black well      
Where you see only a dim sort of glimmer          90   
That has for you no light.”      
   
        “I see the well,”      
I said, “but there’s a doubt about the glimmer—      
Say nothing of the light. I’m at your service;      
And though you say that I shall not be happy,          95   
I shall be if in some way I may serve.      
To tell you fairly now that I know nothing      
Is nothing more than fair.”—“You know as much      
As any man alive—save only one man,      
If he’s alive. Whether he lives or not         100   
Is rather for time to answer than for me;      
And that’s a reason, or a part of one,      
For your appearance here. You do not know him,      
And even if you should pass him in the street      
He might go by without your feeling him         105   
Between you and the world. I cannot say      
Whether he would, but I suppose he might.”      
   
“And I suppose you might, if urged,” I said,      
“Say in what water it is that we are fishing.      
You that have reasons hidden in a well,         110   
Not mentioning all your nameless friends that walk      
The streets and are not either dead or living      
For company, are surely, one would say      
To be forgiven if you may seem distraught—      
I mean distrait. I don’t know what I mean.         115   
I only know that I am at your service,      
Always, yet with a special reservation      
That you may deem eccentric. All the same      
Unless your living dead man comes to life,      
Or is less indiscriminately dead,         120   
I shall go home.”      
   
        “No, you will not go home,”      
Said Avon; “or I beg that you will not.”      
So saying, he went slowly to the door      
And turned the key. “Forgive me and my manners,         125   
But I would be alone with you this evening.      
The key, as you observe, is in the lock;      
And you may sit between me and the door,      
Or where you will. You have my word of honor      
That I would spare you the least injury         130   
That might attend your presence here this evening.”      
   
“I thank you for your soothing introduction,      
Avon,” I said. “Go on. The Lord giveth,      
The Lord taketh away. I trust myself      
Always to you and to your courtesy.         135   
Only remember that I cling somewhat      
Affectionately to the old tradition.”—      
“I understand you and your part,” said Avon;      
“And I dare say it’s well enough, tonight,      
We play around the circumstance a little.         140   
I’ve read of men that half way to the stake      
Would have their little joke. It’s well enough;      
Rather a waste of time, but well enough.”      
   
I listened as I waited, and heard steps      
Outside of one who paused and then went on;         145   
And, having heard, I might as well have seen      
The fear in his wife’s eyes. He gazed away,      
As I could see, in helpless thought of her,      
And said to me: “Well, then, it was like this.      
Some tales will have a deal of going back         150   
In them before they are begun. But this one      
Begins in the beginning—when he came.      
I was a boy at school, sixteen years old,      
And on my way, in all appearances,      
To mark an even-tempered average         155   
Among the major mediocrities      
Who serve and earn with no especial noise      
Or vast reward. I saw myself, even then,      
A light for no high shining; and I feared      
No boy or man—having, in truth, no cause.         160   
I was enough a leader to be free,      
And not enough a hero to be jealous.      
Having eyes and ears, I knew that I was envied,      
And as a proper sort of compensation      
Had envy of my own for two or three—         165   
But never felt, and surely never gave,      
The wound of any more malevolence      
Than decent youth, defeated for a day,      
May take to bed with him and kill with sleep.      
So, and so far, my days were going well,         170   
And would have gone so, but for the black tiger      
That many of us fancy is in waiting,      
But waits for most of us in fancy only.      
For me there was no fancy in his coming,      
Though God knows I had never summoned him,         175   
Or thought of him. To this day I’m adrift      
And in the dark, out of all reckoning,      
To find a reason why he ever was,      
Or what was ailing Fate when he was born      
On this alleged God-ordered earth of ours.         180   
Now and again there comes one of his kind—      
By chance, we say. I leave all that to you.      
Whether it was an evil chance alone,      
Or some invidious juggling of the stars,      
Or some accrued arrears of ancestors         185   
Who throve on debts that I was here to pay,      
Or sins within me that I knew not of,      
Or just a foretaste of what waits in hell      
For those of us who cannot love a worm,—      
Whatever it was, or whence or why it was,         190   
One day there came a stranger to the school.      
And having had one mordacious glimpse of him      
That filled my eyes and was to fill my life,      
I have known Peace only as one more word      
Among the many others we say over         195   
That have an airy credit of no meaning.      
One of these days, if I were seeing many      
To live, I might erect a cenotaph      
To Job’s wife. I assume that you remember;      
If you forget, she’s extant in your Bible.”         200   
   
Now this was not the language of a man      
Whom I had known as Avon, and I winced      
Hearing it—though I knew that in my heart      
There was no visitation of surprise.      
Unwelcome as it was, and off the key         205   
Calamitously, it overlived a silence      
That was itself a story and affirmed      
A savage emphasis of honesty      
That I would only gladly have attuned      
If possible, to vinous innovation.         210   
But his indifferent wassailing was always      
Too far within the measure of excess      
For that; and then there were those eyes of his.      
Avon indeed had kept his word with me,      
And there was not much yet to make me happy.         215   
   
“So there we were,” he said, “we two together,      
Breathing one air. And how shall I go on      
To say by what machinery the slow net      
Of my fantastic and increasing hate      
Was ever woven as it was around us?         220   
I cannot answer; and you need not ask      
What undulating reptile he was like,      
For such a worm as I discerned in him      
Was never yet on earth or in the ocean,      
Or anywhere else than in my sense of him.         225   
Had all I made of him been tangible,      
The Lord must have invented long ago      
Some private and unspeakable new monster      
Equipped for such a thing’s extermination;      
Whereon the monster, seeing no other monster         230   
Worth biting, would have died with his work done.      
There’s a humiliation in it now,      
As there was then, and worse than there was then;      
For then there was the boy to shoulder it      
Without the sickening weight of added years         235   
Galling him to the grave. Beware of hate      
That has no other boundary than the grave      
Made for it, or for ourselves. Beware, I say;      
And I’m a sorry one, I fear, to say it,      
Though for the moment we may let that go         240   
And while I’m interrupting my own story      
I’ll ask of you the favor of a look      
Into the street. I like it when it’s empty.      
There’s only one man walking? Let him walk.      
I wish to God that all men might walk always,         245   
And so, being busy, love one another more.”      
   
“Avon,” I said, now in my chair again,      
“Although I may not be here to be happy,      
If you are careless, I may have to laugh.      
I have disliked a few men in my life,         250   
But never to the scope of wishing them      
To this particular pedestrian hell      
Of your affection. I should not like that.      
Forgive me, for this time it was your fault.”      
   
He drummed with all his fingers on his chair,         255   
And, after a made smile of acquiescence,      
Took up again the theme of his aversion,      
Which now had flown along with him alone      
For twenty years, like Io’s evil insect,      
To sting him when it would. The decencies         260   
Forbade that I should look at him for ever,      
Yet many a time I found myself ashamed      
Of a long staring at him, and as often      
Essayed the dictionary on the table,      
Wondering if in its interior         265   
There was an uncompanionable word      
To say just what was creeping in my hair,      
At which my scalp would shrink,—at which, again,      
I would arouse myself with a vain scorn,      
Remembering that all this was in New York—         270   
As if that were somehow the banishing      
For ever of all unseemly presences—      
And listen to the story of my friend,      
Who, as I feared, was not for me to save,      
And, as I knew, knew also that I feared it.         275   
   
“Humiliation,” he began again,      
“May be or not the best of all bad names      
I might employ; and if you scent remorse,      
There may be growing such a flower as that      
In the unsightly garden where I planted,         280   
Not knowing the seed or what was coming of it.      
I’ve done much wondering if I planted it;      
But our poor wonder, when it comes too late,      
Fights with a lath, and one that solid fact      
Breaks while it yawns and looks another way         285   
For a less negligible adversary.      
Away with wonder, then; though I’m at odds      
With conscience, even tonight, for good assurance      
That it was I, or chance and I together,      
Did all that sowing. If I seem to you         290   
To be a little bitten by the question,      
Without a miracle it might be true;      
The miracle is to me that I’m not eaten      
Long since to death of it, and that you sit      
With nothing more agreeable than a ghost.         295   
If you had thought a while of that, you might,      
Unhappily, not have come; and your not coming      
Would have been desolation—not for you,      
God save the mark!—for I would have you here.      
I shall not be alone with you to listen;         300   
And I should be far less alone tonight      
With you away, make what you will of that.      
   
“I said that we were going back to school,      
And we may say that we are there—with him.      
This fellow had no friend, and, as for that,         305   
No sign of an apparent need of one,      
Save always and alone—myself. He fixed      
His heart and eyes on me, insufferably,—      
And in a sort of Nemesis-like way,      
Invincibly. Others who might have given         310   
A welcome even to him, or I’ll suppose so—      
Adorning an unfortified assumption      
With gold that might come off with afterthought—      
Got never, if anything, more out of him      
Than a word flung like refuse in their faces,         315   
And rarely that. For God knows what good reason,      
He lavished his whole altered arrogance      
On me; and with an overweening skill,      
Which had sometimes almost a cringing in it,      
Found a few flaws in my tight mail of hate         320   
And slowly pricked a poison into me      
In which at first I failed at recognizing      
An unfamiliar subtle sort of pity.      
But so it was, and I believe he knew it;      
Though even to dream it would have been absurd—         325   
Until I knew it, and there was no need      
Of dreaming. For the fellow’s indolence,      
And his malignant oily swarthiness      
Housing a reptile blood that I could see      
Beneath it, like hereditary venom         330   
Out of old human swamps, hardly revealed      
Itself the proper spawning-ground of pity.      
But so it was. Pity, or something like it,      
Was in the poison of his proximity;      
For nothing else that I have any name for         335   
Could have invaded and so mastered me      
With a slow tolerance that eventually      
Assumed a blind ascendency of custom      
That saw not even itself. When I came in,      
Often I’d find him strewn along my couch         340   
Like an amorphous lizard with its clothes on,      
Reading a book and waiting for its dinner.      
His clothes were always odiously in order,      
Yet I should not have thought of him as clean—      
Not even if he had washed himself to death         345   
Proving it. There was nothing right about him.      
Then he would search, never quite satisfied,      
Though always in a measure confident,      
My eyes to find a welcome waiting in them,      
Unwilling, as I see him now, to know         350   
That it would never be there. Looking back,      
I am not sure that he would not have died      
For me, if I were drowning or on fire,      
Or that I would not rather have let myself      
Die twice than owe the debt of my survival         355   
To him, though he had lost not even his clothes.      
No, there was nothing right about that fellow;      
And after twenty years to think of him      
I should be quite as helpless now to serve him      
As I was then. I mean—without my story.         360   
Be patient, and you’ll see just what I mean—      
Which is to say, you won’t. But you can listen,      
And that’s itself a large accomplishment      
Uncrowned; and may be, at a time like this,      
A mighty charity. It was in January         365   
This evil genius came into our school,      
And it was June when he went out of it—      
If I may say that he was wholly out      
Of any place that I was in thereafter.      
But he was not yet gone. When we are told         370   
By Fate to bear what we may never bear,      
Fate waits a little while to see what happens;      
And this time it was only for the season      
Between the swift midwinter holidays      
And the long progress into weeks and months         375   
Of all the days that followed—with him there      
To make them longer. I would have given an eye,      
Before the summer came, to know for certain      
That I should never be condemned again      
To see him with the other; and all the while         380   
There was a battle going on within me      
Of hate that fought remorse—if you must have it—      
Never to win,… never to win but once,      
And having won, to lose disastrously,      
And as it was to prove, interminably—         385   
Or till an end of living may annul,      
If so it be, the nameless obligation      
That I have not the Christian revenue      
In me to pay. A man who has no gold,      
Or an equivalent, shall pay no gold         390   
Until by chance or labor or contrivance      
He makes it his to pay; and he that has      
No kindlier commodity than hate,      
Glossed with a pity that belies itself      
In its negation and lacks alchemy         395   
To fuse itself to—love, would you have me say?      
I don’t believe it. No, there is no such word.      
If I say tolerance, there’s no more to say.      
And he who sickens even in saying that—      
What coin of God has he to pay the toll         400   
To peace on earth? Good will to men—oh, yes!      
That’s easy; and it means no more than sap,      
Until we boil the water out of it      
Over the fire of sacrifice. I’ll do it;      
And in a measurable way I’ve done it—         405   
But not for him. What are you smiling at?      
Well, so it went until a day in June.      
We were together under an old elm,      
Which now, I hope, is gone—though it’s a crime      
In me that I should have to wish the death         410   
Of such a tree as that. There were no trees      
Like those that grew at school—until he came.      
We stood together under it that day,      
When he, by some ungovernable chance,      
All foreign to the former crafty care         415   
That he had used never to cross my favor,      
Told of a lie that stained a friend of mine      
With a false blot that a few days washed off.      
A trifle now, but a boy’s honor then—      
Which then was everything. There were some words         420   
Between us, but I don’t remember them.      
All I remember is a bursting flood      
Of half a year’s accumulated hate,      
And his incredulous eyes before I struck him.      
He had gone once too far; and when he knew it,         425   
He knew it was all over; and I struck him.      
Pound for pound, he was the better brute;      
But bulking in the way then of my fist      
And all there was alive in me to drive it,      
Three of him misbegotten into one         430   
Would have gone down like him—and being larger,      
Might have bled more, if that were necessary.      
He came up soon; and if I live for ever,      
The vengeance in his eyes, and a weird gleam      
Of desolation—it I make you see it—         435   
Will be before me as it is tonight.      
I shall not ever know how long it was      
I waited his attack that never came;      
It might have been an instant or an hour      
That I stood ready there, watching his eyes,         440   
And the tears running out of them. They made      
Me sick, those tears; for I knew, miserably,      
They were not there for any pain he felt.      
I do not think he felt the pain at all.      
He felt the blow.… Oh, the whole thing was bad—         445   
So bad that even the bleaching suns and rains      
Of years that wash away to faded lines,      
Or blot out wholly, the sharp wrongs and ills      
Of youth, have had no cleansing agent in them      
To dim the picture. I still see him going         450   
Away from where I stood; and I shall see him      
Longer, sometime, than I shall see the face      
Of whosoever watches by the bed      
On which I die—given I die that way.      
I doubt if he could reason his advantage         455   
In living any longer after that      
Among the rest of us. The lad he slandered,      
Or gave a negative immunity      
No better than a stone he might have thrown      
Behind him at his head, was of the few         460   
I might have envied; and for that being known,      
My fury became sudden history,      
And I a sudden hero. But the crown      
I wore was hot; and I would happily      
Have hurled it, if I could, so far away         465   
That over my last hissing glimpse of it      
There might have closed an ocean. He went home      
The next day, and the same unhappy chance      
That first had fettered me and my aversion      
To his unprofitable need of me         470   
Brought us abruptly face to face again      
Beside the carriage that had come for him.      
We met, and for a moment we were still—      
Together. But I was reading in his eyes      
More than I read at college or at law         475   
In years that followed. There was blankly nothing      
For me to say, if not that I was sorry;      
And that was more than hate would let me say—      
Whatever the truth might be. At last he spoke,      
And I could see the vengeance in his eyes,         480   
And a cold sorrow—which, if I had seen      
Much more of it, might yet have mastered me.      
But I would see no more of it. ‘Well, then,’      
He said, ‘have you thought yet of anything      
Worth saying? If so, there’s time. If you are silent,         485   
I shall know where you are until you die.’      
I can still hear him saying those words to me      
Again, without a loss or an addition;      
I know, for I have heard them ever since.      
And there was in me not an answer for them         490   
Save a new roiling silence. Once again      
I met his look, and on his face I saw      
There was a twisting in the swarthiness      
That I had often sworn to be the cast      
Of his ophidian mind. He had no soul.         495   
There was to be no more of him—not then.      
The carriage rolled away with him inside,      
Leaving the two of us alive together      
In the same hemisphere to hate each other.      
I don’t know now whether he’s here alive,         500   
Or whether he’s here dead. But that, of course,      
As you would say, is only a tired man’s fancy.      
You know that I have driven the wheels too fast      
Of late, and all for gold I do not need.      
When are we mortals to be sensible,         505   
Paying no more for life than life is worth?      
Better for us, no doubt, we do not know      
How much we pay or what it is we buy.”      
He waited, gazing at me as if asking      
The worth of what the universe had for sale         510   
For one confessed remorse. Avon, I knew,      
Had driven the wheels too fast, and not for gold.      
   
“If you had given him then your hand,” I said,      
“And spoken, though it strangled you, the truth,      
I should not have the melancholy honor         515   
Of sitting here alone with you this evening.      
If only you had shaken hands with him,      
And said the truth, he would have gone his way.      
And you your way. He might have wished you dead,      
But he would not have made you miserable.         520   
At least,” I added, indefensibly,      
“That’s what I hope is true.”      
   
        He pitied me,      
But had the magnanimity not to say so.      
“If only we had shaken hands,” he said,         525   
“And I had said the truth, we might have been      
In half a moment rolling on the gravel.      
If I had said the truth, I should have said      
That never at any moment on the clock      
Above us in the tower since his arrival         530   
Had I been in a more proficient mood      
To throttle him. If you had seen his eyes      
As I did, and if you had seen his face      
At work as I did, you might understand.      
I was ashamed of it, as I am now,         535   
But that’s the prelude to another theme;      
For now I’m saying only what had happened      
If I had taken his hand and said the truth.      
The wise have cautioned us that where there’s hate      
There’s also fear. The wise are right sometimes.         540   
There may be now, but there was no fear then.      
There was just hatred, hauled up out of hell      
For me to writhe in; and I writhed in it.”      
   
I saw that he was writhing in it still;      
But having a magnanimity myself,         545   
I waited. There was nothing else to do      
But wait, and to remember that his tale,      
Though well along, as I divined it was,      
Yet hovered among shadows and regrets      
Of twenty years ago. When he began         550   
Again to speak, I felt them coming nearer.      
   
“Whenever your poet or your philosopher      
Has nothing richer for us,” he resumed,      
“He burrows among remnants, like a mouse      
In a waste-basket, and with much dry noise         555   
Comes up again, having found Time at the bottom      
And filled himself with its futility.      
‘Time is at once,’ he says, to startle us,      
‘A poison for us, if we make it so,      
And, if we make it so, an antidote         560   
For the same poison that afflicted us.’      
I’m witness to the poison, but the cure      
Of my complaint is not, for me, in Time.      
There may be doctors in eternity      
To deal with it, but they are not here now.         565   
There’s no specific for my three diseases      
That I could swallow, even if I should find it,      
And I shall never find it here on earth.”      
   
“Mightn’t it be as well, my friend,” I said,      
“For you to contemplate the uncompleted         570   
With not such an infernal certainty?”      
   
“And mightn’t it be as well for you, my friend,”      
Said Avon, “to be quiet while I go on?      
When I am done, then you may talk all night—      
Like a physician who can do no good,         575   
But knows how soon another would have his fee      
Were he to tell the truth. Your fee for this      
Is in my gratitude and my affection;      
And I’m not eager to be calling in      
Another to take yours away from you,         580   
Whatever it’s worth. I like to think I know.      
Well then, again. The carriage rolled away      
With him inside; and so it might have gone      
For ten years rolling on, with him still in it,      
For all it was I saw of him. Sometimes         585   
I heard of him, but only as one hears      
Of leprosy in Boston or New York      
And wishes it were somewhere else. He faded      
Out of my scene—yet never quite out of it:      
‘I shall know where you are until you die,’         590   
Were his last words; and they are the same words      
That I received thereafter once a year,      
Infallibly on my birthday, with no name;      
Only a card, and the words printed on it.      
No, I was never rid of him—not quite;         595   
Although on shipboard, on my way from here      
To Hamburg, I believe that I forgot him.      
But once ashore, I should have been half ready      
To meet him there, risen up out of the ground,      
With hoofs and horns and tail and everything.         600   
Believe me, there was nothing right about him,      
Though it was not in Hamburg that I found him.      
Later, in Rome, it was we found each other,      
For the first time since we had been at school.      
There was the same slow vengeance in his eyes         605   
When he saw mine, and there was a vicious twist      
On his amphibious face that might have been      
On anything else a smile—rather like one      
We look for on the stage than in the street.      
I must have been a yard away from him         610   
Yet as we passed I felt the touch of him      
Like that of something soft in a dark room.      
There’s hardly need of saying that we said nothing,      
Or that we gave each other an occasion      
For more than our eyes uttered. He was gone         615   
Before I knew it, like a solid phantom;      
And his reality was for me some time      
In its achievement—given that one’s to be      
Convinced that such an incubus at large      
Was ever quite real. The season was upon us         620   
When there are fitter regions in the world—      
Though God knows he would have been safe enough—      
Than Rome for strayed Americans to live in,      
And when the whips of their itineraries      
Hurry them north again. I took my time,         625   
Since I was paying for it, and leisurely      
Went where I would—though never again to move      
Without him at my elbow or behind me.      
My shadow of him, wherever I found myself,      
Might horribly as well have been the man—         630   
Although I should have been afraid of him      
No more than of a large worm in a salad.      
I should omit the salad, certainly,      
And wish the worm elsewhere. And so he was,      
In fact; yet as I go on to grow older,         635   
I question if there’s anywhere a fact      
That isn’t the malevolent existence      
Of one man who is dead, or is not dead,      
Or what the devil it is that he may be.      
There must be, I suppose, a fact somewhere,         640   
But I don’t know it. I can only tell you      
That later, when to all appearances      
I stood outside a music-hall in London,      
I felt him and then saw that he was there.      
Yes, he was there, and had with him a woman         645   
Who looked as if she didn’t know. I’m sorry      
To this day for that woman—who, no doubt,      
Is doing well. Yes, there he was again;      
There were his eyes and the same vengeance in them      
That I had seen in Rome and twice before—         650   
Not mentioning all the time, or most of it,      
Between the day I struck him and that evening.      
That was the worst show that I ever saw,      
But you had better see it for yourself      
Before you say so too. I went away,         655   
Though not for any fear that I could feel      
Of him or of his worst manipulations,      
But only to be out of the same air      
That made him stay alive in the same world      
With all the gentlemen that were in irons         660   
For uncommendable extravagances      
That I should reckon slight compared with his      
Offence of being. Distance would have made him      
A moving fly-speck on the map of life,—      
But he would not be distant, though his flesh         665   
And bone might have been climbing Fujiyama      
Or Chimborazo—with me there in London,      
Or sitting here. My doom it was to see him,      
Be where I might. That was ten years ago;      
And having waited season after season         670   
His always imminent evil recrudescence,      
And all for nothing, I was waiting still,      
When the Titanic touched a piece of ice      
And we were for a moment where we are,      
With nature laughing at us. When the noise         675   
Had spent itself to names, his was among them;      
And I will not insult you or myself      
With a vain perjury. I was far from cold.      
It seemed as for the first time in my life      
I knew the blessedness of being warm;         680   
And I remember that I had a drink,      
Having assuredly no need of it.      
Pity a fool for his credulity,      
If so you must. But when I found his name      
Among the dead, I trusted once the news;         685   
And after that there were no messages      
In ambush waiting for me on my birthday.      
There was no vestige yet of any fear,      
You understand—if that’s why you are smiling.”      
   
I said that I had not so much as whispered         690   
The name aloud of any fear soever,      
And that I smiled at his unwonted plunge      
Into the perilous pool of Dionysus.      
“Well, if you are so easily diverted      
As that,” he said, drumming his chair again,         695   
“You will be pleased, I think, with what is coming;      
And though there be divisions and departures,      
Imminent from now on, for your diversion      
I’ll do the best I can. More to the point,      
I know a man who if his friends were like him         700   
Would live in the woods all summer and all winter,      
Leaving the town and its iniquities      
To die of their own dust. But having his wits,      
Henceforth he may conceivably avoid      
The adventure unattended. Last October         705   
He took me with him into the Maine woods,      
Where, by the shore of a primeval lake,      
With woods all round it, and a voyage away      
From anything wearing clothes, he had reared somehow      
A lodge, or camp, with a stone chimney in it,         710   
And a wide fireplace to make men forget      
Their sins who sat before it in the evening,      
Hearing the wind outside among the trees      
And the black water washing on the shore.      
I never knew the meaning of October         715   
Until I went with Asher to that place,      
Which I shall not investigate again      
Till I be taken there by other forces      
Than are innate in my economy.      
‘You may not like it,’ Asher said, ‘but Asher         720   
Knows what is good. So put your faith in Asher,      
And come along with him. He’s an odd bird,      
Yet I could wish for the world’s decency      
There might be more of him. And so it was      
I found myself, at first incredulous,         725   
Down there with Asher in the wilderness,      
Alive at last with a new liberty      
And with no sore to fester. He perceived      
In me an altered favor of God’s works,      
And promptly took upon himself the credit,         730   
Which, in a fashion, was as accurate      
As one’s interpretation of another      
Is like to be. So for a frosty fortnight      
We had the sunlight with us on the lake,      
And the moon with us when the sun was down.         735   
‘God gave his adjutants a holiday,’      
Asher assured me, ‘when He made this place’;      
And I agreed with him that it was heaven,—      
Till it was hell for me for then and after.      
   
“There was a village miles away from us         740   
Where now and then we paddled for the mail      
And incidental small commodities      
That perfect exile might require, and stayed      
The night after the voyage with an antique      
Survival of a broader world than ours         745   
Whom Asher called The Admiral. This time,      
A little out of sorts and out of tune      
With paddling, I let Asher go alone,      
Sure that his heart was happy. Then it was      
That hell came. I sat gazing over there         750   
Across the water, watching the sun’s last fire      
Above those gloomy and indifferent trees      
That might have been a wall around the world,      
When suddenly, like faces over the lake,      
Out of the silence of that other shore         755   
I was aware of hidden presences      
That soon, no matter how many of them there were,      
Would all be one. I could not look behind me,      
Where I could hear that one of them was breathing,      
For, if I did, those others over there         760   
Might all see that at last I was afraid;      
And I might hear them without seeing them,      
Seeing that other one. You were not there;      
And it is well for you that you don’t know      
What they are like when they should not be there.         765   
And there were chilly doubts of whether or not      
I should be seeing the rest that I should see      
With eyes, or otherwise. I could not be sure;      
And as for going over to find out,      
All I may tell you now is that my fear         770   
Was not the fear of dying, though I knew soon      
That all the gold in all the sunken ships      
That have gone down since Tyre would not have paid      
For me the ferriage of myself alone      
To that infernal shore. I was in hell,         775   
Remember; and if you have never been there      
You may as well not say how easy it is      
To find the best way out. There may not be one.      
Well, I was there; and I was there alone—      
Alone for the first time since I was born;         780   
And I was not alone. That’s what it is      
To be in hell. I hope you will not go there.      
All through that slow, long, desolating twilight      
Of incoherent certainties, I waited;      
Never alone—never to be alone;         785   
And while the night grew down upon me there,      
I thought of old Prometheus in the story      
That I had read at school, and saw mankind      
All huddled into clusters in the dark,      
Calling to God for light. There was a light         790   
Coming for them, but there was none for me      
Until a shapeless remnant of a moon      
Rose after midnight over the black trees      
Behind me. I should hardly have confessed      
The heritage then of my identity         795   
To my own shadow; for I was powerless there,      
As I am here. Say what you like to say      
To silence, but say none of it to me      
Tonight. To say it now would do no good,      
And you are here to listen. Beware of hate,         800   
And listen. Beware of hate, remorse, and fear,      
And listen. You are staring at the damned,      
But yet you are no more the one than he      
To say that it was he alone who planted      
The flower of death now growing in his garden.         805   
Was it enough, I wonder, that I struck him?      
I shall say nothing. I shall have to wait      
Until I see what’s coming, if it comes,      
When I’m a delver in another garden—      
If such an one there be. If there be none,         810   
All’s well—and over. Rather a vain expense,      
One might affirm—yet there is nothing lost.      
Science be praised that there is nothing lost.”      
   
I’m glad the venom that was on his tongue      
May not go down on paper; and I’m glad         815   
No friend of mine alive, far as I know,      
Has a tale waiting for me with an end      
Like Avon’s. There was here an interruption,      
Though not a long one—only while we heard,      
As we had heard before, the ghost of steps         820   
Faintly outside. We knew that she was there      
Again; and though it was a kindly folly,      
I wished that Avon’s wife would go to sleep.      
   
“I was afraid, this time, but not of man—      
Or man as you may figure him,” he said.         825   
“It was not anything my eyes had seen      
That I could feel around me in the night,      
There by that lake. If I had been alone,      
There would have been the joy of being free,      
Which in imagination I had won         830   
With unimaginable expiation—      
But I was not alone. If you had seen me,      
Waiting there for the dark and looking off      
Over the gloom of that relentless water,      
Which had the stillness of the end of things         835   
That evening on it, I might well have made      
For you the picture of the last man left      
Where God, in his extinction of the rest,      
Had overlooked him and forgotten him.      
Yet I was not alone. Interminably         840   
The minutes crawled along and over me,      
Slow, cold, intangible, and invisible,      
As if they had come up out of that water.      
How long I sat there I shall never know,      
For time was hidden out there in the black lake,         845   
Which now I could see only as a glimpse      
Of black light by the shore. There were no stars      
To mention, and the moon was hours away      
Behind me. There was nothing but myself,      
And what was coming. On my breast I felt         850   
The touch of death, and I should have died then.      
I ruined good Asher’s autumn as it was,      
For he will never again go there alone,      
If ever he goes at all. Nature did ill      
To darken such a faith in her as his,         855   
Though he will have it that I had the worst      
Of her defection, and will hear no more      
Apologies. If it had to be for someone,      
I think it well for me it was for Asher.      
I dwell on him, meaning that you may know him         860   
Before your last horn blows. He has a name      
That’s like a tree, and therefore like himself—      
By which I mean you find him where you leave him.      
I saw him and The Admiral together      
While I was in the dark, but they were far—         865   
Far as around the world from where I was;      
And they knew nothing of what I saw not      
While I knew only I was not alone.      
I made a fire to make the place alive,      
And locked the door. But even the fire was dead,         870   
And all the life there was was in the shadow      
It made of me. My shadow was all of me;      
The rest had had its day, and there was night      
Remaining—only night, that’s made for shadows,      
Shadows and sleep and dreams, or dreams without it.         875   
The fire went slowly down, and now the moon,      
Or that late wreck of it, was coming up;      
And though it was a martyr’s work to move,      
I must obey my shadow, and I did.      
There were two beds built low against the wall,         880   
And down on one of them, with all my clothes on,      
Like a man getting into his own grave,      
I lay—and waited. As the firelight sank,      
The moonlight, which had partly been consumed      
By the black trees, framed on the other wall         885   
A glimmering window not far from the ground.      
The coals were going, and only a few sparks      
Were there to tell of them; and as they died      
The window lightened, and I saw the trees.      
They moved a little, but I could not move,         890   
More than to turn my face the other way;      
And then, if you must have it so, I slept.      
We’ll call it so—if sleep is your best name      
For a sort of conscious, frozen catalepsy      
Wherein a man sees all there is around him         895   
As if it were not real, and he were not      
Alive. You may call it anything you please      
That made me powerless to move hand or foot,      
Or to make any other living motion      
Than after a long horror, without hope,         900   
To turn my face again the other way.      
Some force that was not mine opened my eyes,      
And, as I knew it must be,—it was there.”      
   
Avon covered his eyes—whether to shut      
The memory and the sight of it away,         905   
Or to be sure that mine were for the moment      
Not searching his with pity, is now no matter.      
My glance at him was brief, turning itself      
To the familiar pattern of his rug,      
Wherein I may have sought a consolation—         910   
As one may gaze in sorrow on a shell,      
Or a small apple. So it had come, I thought;      
And heard, no longer with a wonderment,      
The faint recurring footsteps of his wife,      
Who, knowing less than I knew, yet knew more.         915   
Now I could read, I fancied, through the fear      
That latterly was living in her eyes,      
To the sure source of its authority.      
But he went on, and I was there to listen:      
   
“And though I saw it only as a blot         920   
Between me and my life, it was enough      
To make me know that he was watching there—      
Waiting for me to move, or not to move,      
Before he moved. Sick as I was with hate      
Reborn, and chained with fear that was more than fear,         925   
I would have gambled all there was to gain      
Or lose in rising there from where I lay      
And going out after it. ‘Before the dawn,’      
I reasoned, ‘there will be a difference here.      
Therefore it may as well be done outside.’         930   
And then I found I was immovable,      
As I had been before; and a dead sweat      
Rolled out of me as I remembered him      
When I had seen him leaving me at school.      
‘I shall know where you are until you die,’         935   
Were the last words that I had heard him say;      
And there he was. Now I could see his face,      
And all the sad, malignant desperation      
That was drawn on it after I had struck him,      
And on my memory since that afternoon.         940   
But all there was left now for me to do      
Was to lie there and see him while he squeezed      
His unclean outlines into the dim room,      
And half erect inside, like a still beast      
With a face partly man’s, came slowly on         945   
Along the floor to the bed where I lay,      
And waited. There had been so much of waiting,      
Through all those evil years before my respite—      
Which now I knew and recognized at last      
As only his more venomous preparation         950   
For the vile end of a deceiving peace—      
That I began to fancy there was on me      
The stupor that explorers have alleged      
As evidence of nature’s final mercy      
When tigers have them down upon the earth         955   
And wild hot breath is heavy on their faces.      
I could not feel his breath, but I could hear it;      
Though fear had made an anvil of my heart      
Where demons, for the joy of doing it,      
Were sledging death down on it. And I saw         960   
His eyes now, as they were, for the first time—      
Aflame as they had never been before      
With all their gathered vengeance gleaming in them,      
And always that unconscionable sorrow      
That would not die behind it. Then I caught         965   
The shadowy glimpse of an uplifted arm,      
And a moon-flash of metal. That was all.…      
   
“When I believed I was alive again      
I was with Asher and The Admiral,      
Whom Asher had brought with him for a day         970   
With nature. They had found me when they came;      
And there was not much left of me to find.      
I had not moved or known that I was there      
Since I had seen his eyes and felt his breath;      
And it was not for some uncertain hours         975   
After they came that either would say how long      
That might have been. It should have been much longer.      
All you may add will be your own invention,      
For I have told you all there is to tell.      
Tomorrow I shall have another birthday,         980   
And with it there may come another message—      
Although I cannot see the need of it,      
Or much more need of drowning, if that’s all      
Men drown for—when they drown. You know as much      
As I know about that, though I’ve a right,         985   
If not a reason, to be on my guard;      
And only God knows what good that will do.      
Now you may get some air. Good night!—and thank you.”      
He smiled, but I would rather he had not.      
   
I wished that Avon’s wife would go to sleep,         990   
But whether she found sleep that night or not      
I do not know. I was awake for hours,      
Toiling in vain to let myself believe      
That Avon’s apparition was a dream,      
And that he might have added, for romance,         995   
The part that I had taken home with me      
For reasons not in Avon’s dictionary.      
But each recurrent memory of his eyes,      
And of the man himself that I had known      
So long and well, made soon of all my toil         1000   
An evanescent and a vain evasion;      
And it was half as in expectancy      
That I obeyed the summons of his wife      
A little before dawn, and was again      
With Avon in the room where I had left him,         1005   
But not with the same Avon I had left.      
The doctor, an august authority,      
With eminence abroad as well as here,      
Looked hard at me as if I were the doctor      
And he the friend. “I have had eyes on Avon         1010   
For more than half a year,” he said to me,      
“And I have wondered often what it was      
That I could see that I was not to see.      
Though he was in the chair where you are looking,      
I told his wife—I had to tell her something—         1015   
It was a nightmare and an aneurism;      
And so, or partly so, I’ll say it was.      
The last without the first will be enough      
For the newspapers and the undertaker;      
Yet if we doctors were not all immune         1020   
From death, disease, and curiosity,      
My diagnosis would be sorry for me.      
He died, you know, because he was afraid—      
And he had been afraid for a long time;      
And we who knew him well would all agree         1025   
To fancy there was rather more than fear.      
The door was locked inside—they broke it in      
To find him—but she heard him when it came.      
There are no signs of any visitors,      
Or need of them. If I were not a child         1030   
Of science, I should say it was the devil.      
I don’t believe it was another woman,      
And surely it was not another man.”

VIII. Avon’s Harvest, Etc.   
2. Mr. Flood’s Party   
     
OLD Eben Flood, climbing along one night      
Over the hill between the town below      
And the forsaken upland hermitage      
That held as much as he should ever know      
On earth again of home, paused warily.           5   
The road was his with not a native near;      
And Eben, having leisure, said aloud,      
For no man else in Tilbury Town to hear:      
   
“Well, Mr. Flood, we have the harvest moon      
Again, and we may not have many more;          10   
The bird is on the wing, the poet says,      
And you and I have said it here before.      
Drink to the bird.” He raised up to the light      
The jug that he had gone so far to fill,      
And answered huskily: “Well, Mr. Flood,          15   
Since you propose it, I believe I will.”      
   
Alone, as if enduring to the end      
A valiant armor of scarred hopes outworn,      
He stood there in the middle of the road      
Like Roland’s ghost winding a silent horn.          20   
Below him, in the town among the trees,      
Where friends of other days had honored him,      
A phantom salutation of the dead      
Rang thinly till old Eben’s eyes were dim.      
   
Then, as a mother lays her sleeping child          25   
Down tenderly, fearing it may awake,      
He set the jug down slowly at his feet      
With trembling care, knowing that most things break;      
And only when assured that on firm earth      
It stood, as the uncertain lives of men          30   
Assuredly did not, he paced away,      
And with his hand extended paused again:      
   
“Well, Mr. Flood, we have not met like this      
In a long time; and many a change has come      
To both of us, I fear, since last it was          35   
We had a drop together. Welcome home!”      
Convivially returning with himself,      
Again he raised the jug up to the light;      
And with an acquiescent quaver said:      
“Well, Mr. Flood, if you insist, I might.          40   
   
“Only a very little, Mr. Flood—      
For auld lang syne. No more, sir; that will do.”      
So, for the time, apparently it did,      
And Eben evidently thought so too;      
For soon amid the silver loneliness          45   
Of night he lifted up his voice and sang,      
Secure, with only two moons listening,      
Until the whole harmonious landscape rang—      
   
“For auld lang syne.” The weary throat gave out,      
The last word wavered; and the song being done,          50   
He raised again the jug regretfully      
And shook his head, and was again alone.      
There was not much that was ahead of him,      
And there was nothing in the town below—      
Where strangers would have shut the many doors          55   
That many friends had opened long ago.