VII. The Three Taverns   
2. The Wandering Jew   
     
I SAW by looking in his eyes      
That they remembered everything;      
And this was how I came to know      
That he was here, still wandering.      
For though the figure and the scene           5   
Were never to be reconciled,      
I knew the man as I had known      
His image when I was a child.      
   
With evidence at every turn,      
I should have held it safe to guess          10   
That all the newness of New York      
Had nothing new in loneliness;      
Yet here was one who might be Noah,      
Or Nathan, or Abimelech,      
Or Lamech, out of ages lost,—          15   
Or, more than all, Melchizedek.      
   
Assured that he was none of these,      
I gave them back their names again,      
To scan once more those endless eyes      
Where all my questions ended then.          20   
I found in them what they revealed      
That I shall not live to forget,      
And wondered if they found in mine      
Compassion that I might regret.      
   
Pity, I learned, was not the least          25   
Of time’s offending benefits      
That had now for so long impugned      
The conservation of his wits:      
Rather it was that I should yield,      
Alone, the fealty that presents          30   
The tribute of a tempered ear      
To an untempered eloquence.      
   
Before I pondered long enough      
On whence he came and who he was,      
I trembled at his ringing wealth          35   
Of manifold anathemas;      
I wondered, while he seared the world,      
What new defection ailed the race,      
And if it mattered how remote      
Our fathers were from such a place.          40   
   
Before there was an hour for me      
To contemplate with less concern      
The crumbling realm awaiting us      
Than his that was beyond return,      
A dawning on the dust of years          45   
Had shaped with an elusive light      
Mirages of remembered scenes      
That were no longer for the sight.      
   
For now the gloom that hid the man      
Became a daylight on his wrath,          50   
And one wherein my fancy viewed      
New lions ramping in his path.      
The old were dead and had no fangs,      
Wherefore he loved them—seeing not      
They were the same that in their time          55   
Had eaten everything they caught.      
   
The world around him was a gift      
Of anguish to his eyes and ears,      
And one that he had long reviled      
As fit for devils, not for seers.          60   
Where, then, was there a place for him      
That on this other side of death      
Saw nothing good, as he had seen      
No good come out of Nazareth?      
   
Yet here there was a reticence,          65   
And I believe his only one,      
That hushed him as if he beheld      
A Presence that would not be gone.      
In such a silence he confessed      
How much there was to be denied;          70   
And he would look at me and live,      
As others might have looked and died.      
   
As if at last he knew again      
That he had always known, his eyes      
Were like to those of one who gazed          75   
On those of One who never dies.      
For such a moment he revealed      
What life has in it to be lost;      
And I could ask if what I saw,      
Before me there, was man or ghost.          80   
   
He may have died so many times      
That all there was of him to see      
Was pride, that kept itself alive      
As too rebellious to be free;      
He may have told, when more than once          85   
Humility seemed imminent,      
How many a lonely time in vain      
The Second Coming came and went.      
   
Whether he still defies or not      
The failure of an angry task          90   
That relegates him out of time      
To chaos, I can only ask.      
But as I knew him, so he was;      
And somewhere among men to-day      
Those old, unyielding eyes may flash,          95   
And flinch—and look the other way.

VII. The Three Taverns   
3. Neighbors   
     
AS often as we thought of her,      
  We thought of a gray life      
That made a quaint economist      
  Of a wolf-haunted wife;      
We made the best of all she bore           5   
  That was not ours to bear,      
And honored her for wearing things      
  That were not things to wear.      
   
There was a distance in her look      
  That made us look again;          10   
And if she smiled, we might believe      
  That we had looked in vain.      
Rarely she came inside our doors,      
  And had not long to stay;      
And when she left, it seemed somehow          15   
  That she was far away.      
   
At last, when we had all forgot      
  That all is here to change,      
A shadow on the commonplace      
  Was for a moment strange.          20   
Yet there was nothing for surprise,      
  Nor much that need be told:      
Love, with his gift of pain, had given      
  More than one heart could hold.

VII. The Three Taverns   
4. The Mill   
     
THE MILLER’S wife had waited long,      
  The tea was cold, the fire was dead;      
And there might yet be nothing wrong      
  In how he went and what he said:      
“There are no millers any more,”           5   
  Was all that she heard him say;      
And he had lingered at the door      
  So long that it seemed yesterday.      
   
Sick with a fear that had no form      
  She knew that she was there at last;          10   
And in the mill there was a warm      
  And mealy fragrance of the past.      
What else there was would only seem      
  To say again what he had meant;      
And what was hanging from a beam          15   
  Would not have heeded where she went.      
   
And if she thought it followed her,      
  She may have reasoned in the dark      
That one way of the few there were      
  Would hide her and would leave no mark:          20   
Black water, smooth above the weir      
  Like starry velvet in the night,      
Though ruffled once, would soon appear      
  The same as ever to the sight.

VII. The Three Taverns   
5. The Dark Hills   
     
DARK hills at evening in the west,      
Where sunset hovers like a sound      
Of golden horns that sang to rest      
Old bones of warriors under ground,      
Far now from all the bannered ways           5   
Where flash the legions of the sun,      
You fade—as if the last of days      
Were fading, and all wars were done

VII. The Three Taverns   
6. The Three Taverns   
     
When the brethren heard of us, they came to meet us as far as Appii Forum, and The Three Taverns.—(Acts xxviii, 15)


HERODION, Apelles, Amplias,      
And Andronicus? Is it you I see—      
At last? And is it you now that are gazing      
As if in doubt of me? Was I not saying      
That I should come to Rome? I did say that;           5   
And I said furthermore that I should go      
On westward, where the gateway of the world      
Lets in the central sea. I did say that,      
But I say only, now, that I am Paul—      
A prisoner of the Law, and of the Lord          10   
A voice made free. If there be time enough      
To live, I may have more to tell you then      
Of western matters. I go now to Rome,      
Where Cæsar waits for me, and I shall wait,      
And Cæsar knows how long. In Cæsarea          15   
There was a legend of Agrippa saying      
In a light way to Festus, having heard      
My deposition, that I might be free,      
Had I stayed free of Cæsar; but the word      
Of God would have it as you see it is—          20   
And here I am. The cup that I shall drink      
Is mine to drink—the moment or the place      
Not mine to say. If it be now in Rome,      
Be it now in Rome; and if your faith exceed      
The shadow cast of hope, say not of me          25   
Too surely or too soon that years and shipwreck,      
And all the many deserts I have crossed      
That are not named or regioned, have undone      
Beyond the brevities of our mortal healing      
The part of me that is the least of me.          30   
You see an older man than he who fell      
Prone to the earth when he was nigh Damascus,      
Where the great light came down; yet I am he      
That fell, and he that saw, and he that heard.      
And I am here, at last; and if at last          35   
I give myself to make another crumb      
For this pernicious feast of time and men—      
Well, I have seen too much of time and men      
To fear the ravening or the wrath of either.      
   
Yes, it is Paul you see—the Saul of Tarsus          40   
That was a fiery Jew, and had men slain      
For saying Something was beyond the Law,      
And in ourselves. I fed my suffering soul      
Upon the Law till I went famishing,      
Not knowing that I starved. How should I know,          45   
More then than any, that the food I had—      
What else it may have been—was not for me?      
My fathers and their fathers and their fathers      
Had found it good, and said there was no other,      
And I was of the line. When Stephen fell,          50   
Among the stones that crushed his life away,      
There was no place alive that I could see      
For such a man. Why should a man be given      
To live beyond the Law? So I said then,      
As men say now to me. How then do I          55   
Persist in living? Is that what you ask?      
If so, let my appearance be for you      
No living answer; for Time writes of death      
On men before they die, and what you see      
Is not the man. The man that you see not—          60   
The man within the man—is most alive;      
Though hatred would have ended, long ago,      
The bane of his activities. I have lived,      
Because the faith within me that is life      
Endures to live, and shall, till soon or late,          65   
Death, like a friend unseen, shall say to me      
My toil is over and my work begun.      
   
How often, and how many a time again,      
Have I said I should be with you in Rome!      
He who is always coming never comes,          70   
Or comes too late, you may have told yourselves;      
And I may tell you now that after me,      
Whether I stay for little or for long,      
The wolves are coming. Have an eye for them,      
And a more careful ear for their confusion          75   
Than you need have much longer for the sound      
Of what I tell you—should I live to say      
More than I say to Cæsar. What I know      
Is down for you to read in what is written;      
And if I cloud a little with my own          80   
Mortality the gleam that is immortal,      
I do it only because I am I—      
Being on earth and of it, in so far      
As time flays yet the remnant. This you know;      
And if I sting men, as I do sometimes,          85   
With a sharp word that hurts, it is because      
Man’s habit is to feel before he sees;      
And I am of a race that feels. Moreover,      
The world is here for what is not yet here      
For more than are a few; and even in Rome,          90   
Where men are so enamored of the Cross      
That fame has echoed, and increasingly,      
The music of your love and of your faith      
To foreign ears that are as far away      
As Antioch and Haran, yet I wonder          95   
How much of love you know, and if your faith      
Be the shut fruit of words. If so, remember      
Words are but shells unfilled. Jews have at least      
A Law to make them sorry they were born      
If they go long without it; and these Gentiles,         100   
For the first time in shrieking history,      
Have love and law together, if so they will,      
For their defense and their immunity      
In these last days. Rome, if I know the name,      
Will have anon a crown of thorns and fire         105   
Made ready for the wreathing of new masters,      
Of whom we are appointed, you and I,—      
And you are still to be when I am gone,      
Should I go presently. Let the word fall,      
Meanwhile, upon the dragon-ridden field         110   
Of circumstance, either to live or die;      
Concerning which there is a parable,      
Made easy for the comfort and attention      
Of those who preach, fearing they preach in vain.      
You are to plant, and then to plant again         115   
Where you have gathered, gathering as you go;      
For you are in the fields that are eternal,      
And you have not the burden of the Lord      
Upon your mortal shoulders. What you have      
Is a light yoke, made lighter by the wearing,         120   
Till it shall have the wonder and the weight      
Of a clear jewel, shining with a light      
Wherein the sun and all the fiery stars      
May soon be fading. When Gamaliel said      
That if they be of men these things are nothing         125   
But if they be of God, they are for none      
To overthrow, he spoke as a good Jew,      
And one who stayed a Jew; and he said all.      
And you know, by the temper of your faith,      
How far the fire is in you that I felt         130   
Before I knew Damascus. A word here,      
Or there, or not there, or not anywhere,      
Is not the Word that lives and is the life;      
And you, therefore, need weary not yourselves      
With jealous aches of others. If the world         135   
Were not a world of aches and innovations,      
Attainment would have no more joy of it.      
There will be creeds and schisms, creeds in creeds,      
And schisms in schisms; myriads will be done      
To death because a farthing has two sides,         140   
And is at last a farthing. Telling you this,      
I, who bid men to live, appeal to Cæsar.      
Once I had said the ways of God were dark,      
Meaning by that the dark ways of the Law.      
Such is the Glory of our tribulations;         145   
For the Law kills the flesh that kills the Law,      
And we are then alive. We have eyes then;      
And we have then the Cross between two worlds—      
To guide us, or to blind us for a time,      
Till we have eyes indeed. The fire that smites         150   
A few on highways, changing all at once,      
Is not for all. The power that holds the world      
Away from God that holds himself away—      
Farther away than all your works and words      
Are like to fly without the wings of faith—         155   
Was not, nor ever shall be, a small hazard      
Enlivening the ways of easy leisure      
Or the cold road of knowledge. When our eyes      
Have wisdom, we see more than we remember;      
And the old world of our captivities         160   
May then become a smitten glimpse of ruin,      
Like one where vanished hewers have had their day      
Of wrath on Lebanon. Before we see,      
Meanwhile, we suffer; and I come to you,      
At last, through many storms and through much night.         165   
   
Yet whatsoever I have undergone,      
My keepers in this instance are not hard.      
But for the chance of an ingratitude,      
I might indeed be curious of their mercy,      
And fearful of their leisure while I wait,         170   
A few leagues out of Rome. Men go to Rome,      
Not always to return—but not that now.      
Meanwhile, I seem to think you look at me      
With eyes that are at last more credulous      
Of my identity. You remark in me         175   
No sort of leaping giant, though some words      
Of mine to you from Corinth may have leapt      
A little through your eyes into your soul.      
I trust they were alive, and are alive      
Today; for there be none that shall indite         180   
So much of nothing as the man of words      
Who writes in the Lord’s name for his name’s sake      
And has not in his blood the fire of time      
To warm eternity. Let such a man—      
If once the light is in him and endures—         185   
Content himself to be the general man,      
Set free to sift the decencies and thereby      
To learn, except he be one set aside      
For sorrow, more of pleasure than of pain;      
Though if his light be not the light indeed,         190   
But a brief shine that never really was,      
And fails, leaving him worse than where he was,      
Then shall he be of all men destitute.      
And here were not an issue for much ink,      
Or much offending faction among scribes.         195   
   
The Kingdom is within us, we are told;      
And when I say to you that we possess it      
In such a measure as faith makes it ours,      
I say it with a sinner’s privilege      
Of having seen and heard, and seen again,         200   
After a darkness; and if I affirm      
To the last hour that faith affords alone      
The Kingdom entrance and an entertainment,      
I do not see myself as one who says      
To man that he shall sit with folded hands         205   
Against the Coming. If I be anything,      
I move a driven agent among my kind,      
Establishing by the faith of Abraham,      
And by the grace of their necessities,      
The clamoring word that is the word of life         210   
Nearer than heretofore to the solution      
Of their tomb-serving doubts. If I have loosed      
A shaft of language that has flown sometimes      
A little higher than the hearts and heads      
Of nature’s minions, it will yet be heard,         215   
Like a new song that waits for distant ears.      
I cannot be the man that I am not;      
And while I own that earth is my affliction,      
I am a man of earth, who says not all      
To all alike. That were impossible.         220   
Even as it were so that He should plant      
A larger garden first. But you today      
Are for the larger sowing; and your seed,      
A little mixed, will have, as He foresaw,      
The foreign harvest of a wider growth,         225   
And one without an end. Many there are,      
And are to be, that shall partake of it,      
Though none may share it with an understanding      
That is not his alone. We are all alone;      
And yet we are all parcelled of one order—         230   
Jew, Gentile, or barbarian in the dark      
Of wildernesses that are not so much      
As names yet in a book. And there are many,      
Finding at last that words are not the Word,      
And finding only that, will flourish aloft,         235   
Like heads of captured Pharisees on pikes,      
Our contradictions and discrepancies;      
And there are many more will hang themselves      
Upon the letter, seeing not in the Word      
The friend of all who fail, and in their faith         240   
A sword of excellence to cut them down.      
   
As long as there are glasses that are dark—      
And there are many—we see darkly through them;      
All which have I conceded and set down      
In words that have no shadow. What is dark         245   
Is dark, and we may not say otherwise;      
Yet what may be as dark as a lost fire      
For one of us, may still be for another      
A coming gleam across the gulf of ages,      
And a way home from shipwreck to the shore;         250   
And so, through pangs and ills and desperations,      
There may be light for all. There shall be light.      
As much as that, you know. You cannot say      
This woman or that man will be the next      
On whom it falls; you are not here for that.         255   
You ministration is to be for others      
The firing of a rush that may for them      
Be soon the fire itself. The few at first      
Are fighting for the multitude at last;      
Therefore remember what Gamaliel said         260   
Before you, when the sick were lying down      
In streets all night for Peter’s passing shadow.      
Fight, and say what you feel; say more than words.      
Give men to know that even their days of earth      
To come are more than ages that are gone.         265   
Say what you feel, while you have time to say it.      
Eternity will answer for itself,      
Without your intercession; yet the way      
For many is a long one, and as dark,      
Meanwhile, as dreams of hell. See not your toil         270   
Too much, and if I be away from you,      
Think of me as a brother to yourselves,      
Of many blemishes. Beware of stoics,      
And give your left hand to grammarians;      
And when you seem, as many a time you may,         275   
To have no other friend than hope, remember      
That you are not the first, or yet the last.      
   
The best of life, until we see beyond      
The shadows of ourselves (and they are less      
Than even the blindest of indignant eyes         280   
Would have them) is in what we do not know.      
Make, then, for all your fears a place to sleep      
With all your faded sins; nor think yourselves      
Egregious and alone for your defects      
Of youth and yesterday. I was young once;         285   
And there’s a question if you played the fool      
With a more fervid and inherent zeal      
Than I have in my story to remember,      
Or gave your necks to folly’s conquering foot,      
Or flung yourselves with an unstudied aim,         290   
More frequently than I. Never mind that.      
Man’s little house of days will hold enough,      
Sometimes, to make him wish it were not his,      
But it will not hold all. Things that are dead      
Are best without it, and they own their death         295   
By virtue of their dying. Let them go,—      
But think you not the world is ashes yet,      
And you have all the fire. The world is here      
Today, and it may not be gone tomorrow;      
For there are millions, and there may be more,         300   
To make in turn a various estimation      
Of its old ills and ashes, and the traps      
Of its apparent wrath. Many with ears      
That hear not yet, shall have ears given to them,      
And then they shall hear strangely. Many with eyes         305   
That are incredulous of the Mystery      
Shall yet be driven to feel, and then to read      
Where language has an end and is a veil,      
Not woven of our words. Many that hate      
Their kind are soon to know that without love         310   
Their faith is but the perjured name of nothing.      
I that have done some hating in my time      
See now no time for hate; I that have left,      
Fading behind me like familiar lights      
That are to shine no more for my returning,         315   
Home, friends, and honors,—I that have lost all else      
For wisdom, and the wealth of it, say now      
To you that out of wisdom has come love,      
That measures and is of itself the measure      
Of works and hope and faith. Your longest hours         320   
Are not so long that you may torture them      
And harass not yourselves; and the last days      
Are on the way that you prepare for them,      
And was prepared for you, here in a world      
Where you have sinned and suffered, striven and seen.         325   
If you be not so hot for counting them      
Before they come that you consume yourselves,      
Peace may attend you all in these last days—      
And me, as well as you. Yes, even in Rome.      
   
Well, I have talked and rested, though I fear         330   
My rest has not been yours; in which event,      
Forgive one who is only seven leagues      
From Cæsar. When I told you I should come,      
I did not see myself the criminal      
You contemplate, for seeing beyond the Law         335   
That which the Law saw not. But this, indeed,      
Was good of you, and I shall not forget;      
No, I shall not forget you came so far      
To meet a man so dangerous. Well, farewell.      
They come to tell me I am going now—         340   
With them. I hope that we shall meet again,      
But none may say what he shall find in Rome.

VII. The Three Taverns   
7. Demos   
     
I

ALL you that are enamored of my name      
  And least intent on what most I require,      
  Beware; for my design and your desire,      
Deplorably, are not as yet the same.      
   
Beware, I say, the failure and the shame           5   
  Of losing that for which you now aspire      
  So blindly, and of hazarding entire      
The gift that I was bringing when I came.      
   
Give as I will, I cannot give you sight      
  Whereby to see that with you there are some          10   
  To lead you, and be led. But they are dumb      
Before the wrangling and the shrill delight      
  Of your deliverance that has not come,      
And shall not, if I fail you—as I might.      
   
II

SO little have you seen of what awaits          15   
  Your fevered glimpse of a democracy      
  Confused and foiled with an equality      
Not equal to the envy it creates,      
That you see not how near you are the gates      
  Of an old king who listens fearfully          20   
  To you that are outside and are to be      
The noisy lords of imminent estates.      
   
Rather be then your prayer that you shall have      
  Your kingdom undishonored. Having all,      
  See not the great among you for the small,          25   
But hear their silence; for the few shall save      
  The many, or the many are to fall—      
Still to be wrangling in a noisy grave.

   
VII. The Three Taverns   
8. The Flying Dutchman   
     
UNYIELDING in the pride of his defiance,      
Afloat with none to serve or to command,      
Lord of himself at last, and all by Science,      
  He seeks the Vanished Land.      
   
Alone, by the one light of his one thought,           5   
  He steers to find the shore from which we came,      
Fearless of in what coil he may be caught      
  On seas that have no name.      
   
Into the night he sails; and after night      
  There is a dawning, though there be no sun;          10   
Wherefore, with nothing but himself in sight,      
  Unsighted, he sails on.      
   
At last there is a lifting of the cloud      
  Between the flood before him and the sky;      
And then—though he may curse the Power aloud          15   
  That has no power to die—      
   
He steers himself away from what is haunted      
By the old ghost of what has been before,—      
Abandoning, as always, and undaunted,      
One fog-walled island more.

   
VII. The Three Taverns   
9. Tact   
     
OBSERVANT of the way she told      
  So much of what was true,      
No vanity could long withhold      
  Regard that was her due:      
She spared him the familiar guile,           5   
  So easily achieved,      
That only made a man to smile      
  And left him undeceived.      
   
Aware that all imagining      
  Of more than what she meant          10   
Would urge an end of everything,      
  He stayed; and when he went,      
They parted with a merry word      
  That was to him as light      
As any that was ever heard          15   
  Upon a starry night.      
   
She smiled a little, knowing well      
  That he would not remark      
That ruins of a day that fell      
  Around her in the dark:          20   
He saw no ruins anywhere,      
  Nor fancied there were scars      
On anyone who lingered there,      
  Alone below the stars.

VII. The Three Taverns   
10. On the Way   
     
(PHILADELPHIA, 1794)

  NOTE.—The following imaginary dialogue between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr, which is not based upon any specific incident in American history, may be supposed to have occurred a few months previous to Hamilton’s retirement from Washington’s Cabinet in 1795 and a few years before the political ingenuities of Burr—who has been characterized, without much exaggeration, as the inventor of American politics—began to be conspicuously formidable to the Federalists. These activities on the part of Burr resulted, as the reader will remember, in the Burr-Jefferson tie for the Presidency in 1800, and finally in the Burr-Hamilton duel at Weehawken in 1804.


BURR

HAMILTON, if he rides you down, remember      
That I was here to speak, and so to save      
Your fabric from catastrophe. That’s good;      
For I perceive that you observe him also.      
A President, a-riding of his horse,           5   
May dust a General and be forgiven;      
But why be dusted—when we’re all alike,      
All equal, and all happy? Here he comes—      
And there he goes. And we, by your new patent,      
Would seem to be two kings here by the wayside,          10   
With our two hats off to his Excellency.      
Why not his Majesty, and done with it?      
Forgive me if I shook your meditation,      
But you that weld our credit should have eyes      
To see what’s coming. Bury me first if I do.          15   
   
HAMILTON

There’s always in some pocket of your brain      
A care for me; wherefore my gratitude      
For your attention is commensurate      
With your concern. Yes, Burr, we are two kings;      
We are as royal as two ditch-diggers;          20   
But owe me not your sceptre. These are the days      
When first a few seem all; but if we live      
We may again be seen to be the few      
That we have always been. These are the days      
When men forget the stars, and are forgotten.          25   
   
BURR

But why forget them? They’re the same that winked      
Upon the world when Alcibiades      
Cut off his dog’s tail to induce distinction.      
There are dogs yet, and Alcibiades      
Is not forgotten.          30   
   
HAMILTON

  Yes, there are dogs enough,      
God knows; and I can hear them in my dreams.      
   
BURR

Never a doubt. But what you hear the most      
Is your new music, something out of tune      
With your intention. How in the name of Cain,          35   
I seem to hear you ask, are men to dance,      
When all men are musicians. Tell me that,      
I hear you saying, and I’ll tell you the name      
Of Samson’s mother. But why shroud yourself      
Before the coffin comes? For all you know,          40   
The tree that is to fall for your last house      
Is now a sapling. You may have to wait      
So long as to be sorry; though I doubt it,      
For you are not at home in your new Eden      
Where chilly whispers of a likely frost          45   
Accumulate already in the air.      
I think a touch of ermine, Hamilton,      
Would be for you in your autumnal mood      
A pleasant sort of warmth along the shoulders.      
   
HAMILTON

If so it is you think, you may as well          50   
Give over thinking. We are done with ermine.      
What I fear most is not the multitude,      
But those who are to loop it with a string      
That has one end in France and one end here.      
I’m not so fortified with observation          55   
That I could swear that more than half a score      
Among us who see lightning see that ruin      
Is not the work of thunder. Since the world      
Was ordered, there was never a long pause      
For caution between doing and undoing.          60   
   
BURR

Go on, sir; my attention is a trap      
Set for the catching of all compliments      
To Monticello, and all else abroad      
That has a name or an identity.      
   
HAMILTON

I leave to you the names—there are too many;          65   
Yet one there is to sift and hold apart,      
As now I see. There comes at last a glimmer      
That is not always clouded, or too late.      
But I was near and young, and had the reins      
To play with while he manned a team so raw          70   
That only God knows where the end had been      
Of all that riding without Washington.      
There was a nation in the man who passed us,      
If there was not a world. I may have driven      
Since then some restive horses, and alone,          75   
And through a splashing of abundant mud;      
But he who made the dust that sets you on      
To coughing, made the road. Now it seems dry,      
And in a measure safe.      
   
BURR

  Here’s a new tune          80   
From Hamilton. Has your caution all at once,      
And over night, grown till it wrecks the cradle?      
I have forgotten what my father said      
When I was born, but there’s a rustling of it      
Among my memories, and it makes a noise          85   
About as loud as all that I have held      
And fondled heretofore of your same caution.      
But that’s affairs, not feelings. If our friends      
Guessed half we say of them, our enemies      
Would itch in our friends’ jackets. Howsoever,          90   
The world is of a sudden on its head,      
And all are spilled—unless you cling alone      
With Washington. Ask Adams about that.      
   
HAMILTON

We’ll not ask Adams about anything.      
We fish for lizards when we choose to ask          95   
For what we know already is not coming,      
And we must eat the answer. Where’s the use      
Of asking when this man says everything,      
With all his tongues of silence?      
   
BURR

I dare say.         100   
I dare say, but I won’t. One of those tongues      
I’ll borrow for the nonce. He’ll never miss it.      
We mean his Western Majesty, King George.      
   
HAMILTON

I mean the man who rode by on his horse.      
I’ll beg of you the meed of your indulgence         105   
If I should say this planet may have done      
A deal of weary whirling when at last,      
If ever, Time shall aggregate again      
A majesty like his that has no name.      
   
BURR

Then you concede his Majesty? That’s good,         110   
And what of yours? Here are two majesties.      
Favor the Left a little, Hamilton,      
Or you’ll be floundering in the ditch that waits      
For riders who forget where they are riding.      
If we and France, as you anticipate,         115   
Must eat each other, what Cæsar, if not yourself,      
Do you see for the master of the feast?      
There may be a place waiting on your head      
For laurel thick as Nero’s. You don’t know.      
I have not crossed your glory, though I might         120   
If I saw thrones at auction.      
   
HAMILTON

  Yes, you might.      
If war is on the way, I shall be—here;      
And I’ve no vision of your distant heels.      
   
BURR

I see that I shall take an inference         125   
To bed with me to-night to keep me warm.      
I thank you, Hamilton, and I approve      
Your fealty to the aggregated greatness      
Of him you lean on while he leans on you.      
   
HAMILTON

This easy phrasing is a game of yours         130   
That you may win to lose. I beg your pardon,      
But you that have the sight will not employ      
The will to see with it. If you did so,      
There might be fewer ditches dug for others      
In your perspective; and there might be fewer         135   
Contemporary motes of prejudice      
Between you and the man who made the dust.      
Call him a genius or a gentleman,      
A prophet or a builder, or what not,      
But hold your disposition off the balance,         140   
And weigh him in the light. Once (I believe      
I tell you nothing new to your surmise,      
Or to the tongues of towns and villages)      
I nourished with an adolescent fancy—      
Surely forgivable to you, my friend—         145   
An innocent and amiable conviction      
That I was, by the grace of honest fortune,      
A savior at his elbow through the war,      
Where I might have observed, more than I did,      
Patience and wholesome passion. I was there,         150   
And for such honor I gave nothing worse      
Than some advice at which he may have smiled.      
I must have given a modicum besides,      
Or the rough interval between those days      
And these would never have made for me my friends,         155   
Or enemies. I should be something somewhere—      
I say not what—but I should not be here      
If he had not been there. Possibly, too,      
You might not—or that Quaker with his cane.      
   
BURR

Possibly, too, I should. When the Almighty         160   
Rides a white horse, I fancy we shall know it.      
   
HAMILTON

It was a man, Burr, that was in my mind;      
No god, or ghost, or demon—only a man:      
A man whose occupation is the need      
Of those who would not feel it if it bit them;         165   
And one who shapes an age while he endures      
The pin pricks of inferiorities;      
A cautious man, because he is but one;      
A lonely man, because he is a thousand.      
No marvel you are slow to find in him         170   
The genius that is one spark or is nothing:      
His genius is a flame that he must hold      
So far above the common heads of men      
That they may view him only through the mist      
Of their defect, and wonder what he is.         175   
It seems to me the mystery that is in him      
That makes him only more to me a man      
Than any other I have ever known.      
   
BURR

I grant you that his worship is a man.      
I’m not so much at home with mysteries,         180   
May be, as you—so leave him with his fire:      
God knows that I shall never put it out.      
He has not made a cripple of himself      
In his pursuit of me, though I have heard      
His condescension honors me with parts.         185   
Parts make a whole, if we’ve enough of them;      
And once I figured a sufficiency      
To be at least an atom in the annals      
Of your republic. But I must have erred.      
   
HAMILTON

You smile as if your spirit lived at ease         190   
With error. I should not have named it so,      
Failing assent from you; nor, if I did,      
Should I be so complacent in my skill      
To comb the tangled language of the people      
As to be sure of anything in these days.         195   
Put that much in account with modesty.      
   
BURR

What in the name of Ahab, Hamilton,      
Have you, in the last region of your dreaming,      
To do with “people”? You may be the devil      
In your dead-reckoning of what reefs and shoals         200   
Are waiting on the progress of our ship      
Unless you steer it, but you’ll find it irksome      
Alone there in the stern; and some warm day      
There’ll be an inland music in the rigging,      
And afterwards on deck. I’m not affined         205   
Or favored overmuch at Monticello,      
But there’s a mighty swarming of new bees      
About the premises, and all have wings.      
If you hear something buzzing before long,      
Be thoughtful how you strike, remembering also         210   
There was a fellow Naboth had a vineyard,      
And Ahab cut his hair off and went softly.      
   
HAMILTON

I don’t remember that he cut his hair off.      
   
BURR

Somehow I rather fancy that he did.      
If so, it’s in the Book; and if not so,         215   
He did the rest, and did it handsomely.      
   
HAMILTON

Commend yourself to Ahab and his ways      
If they inveigle you to emulation;      
But where, if I may ask it, are you tending      
With your invidious wielding of the Scriptures?         220   
You call to mind an eminent archangel      
Who fell to make him famous. Would you fall      
So far as he, to be so far remembered?      
   
BURR

Before I fall or rise, or am an angel,      
I shall acquaint myself a little further         225   
With our new land’s new language, which is not—      
Peace to your dreams—an idiom to your liking.      
I’m wondering if a man may always know      
How old a man may be at thirty-seven;      
I wonder likewise if a prettier time         230   
Could be decreed for a good man to vanish      
Than about now for you, before you fade,      
And even your friends are seeing that you have had      
Your cup too full for longer mortal triumph.      
Well, you have had enough, and had it young;         235   
And the old wine is nearer to the lees      
Than you are to the work that you are doing.      
   
HAMILTON

When does this philological excursion      
Into new lands and languages begin?      
   
BURR

Anon—that is, already. Only Fortune         240   
Gave me this afternoon the benefaction      
Of your blue back, which I for love pursued,      
And in pursuing may have saved your life—      
Also the world a pounding piece of news:      
Hamilton bites the dust of Washington,         245   
Or rather of his horse. For you alone,      
Or for your fame, I’d wish it might have been so.      
   
HAMILTON

Not every man among us has a friend      
So jealous for the other’s fame. How long      
Are you to diagnose the doubtful case         250   
Of Demos—and what for? Have you a sword      
For some new Damocles? If it’s for me,      
I have lost all official appetite,      
And shall have faded, after January,      
Into the law. I’m going to New York.         255   
   
BURR

No matter where you are, one of these days      
I shall come back to you and tell you something.      
This Demos, I have heard, has in his wrist      
A pulse that no two doctors have as yet      
Counted and found the same, and in his mouth         260   
A tongue that has the like alacrity      
For saying or not for saying what most it is      
That pullulates in his ignoble mind.      
One of these days I shall appear again,      
To tell you more of him and his opinions;         265   
I shall not be so long out of your sight,      
Or take myself so far, that I may not,      
Like Alcibiades, come back again.      
He went away to Phrygia, and fared ill.      
   
HAMILTON

There’s an example in Themistocles:         270   
He went away to Persia, and fared well.      
   
BURR

So? Must I go so far? And if so, why so?      
I had not planned it so. Is this the road      
I take? If so, farewell.      
   
HAMILTON

  Quite so. Farewell.

VII. The Three Taverns   
11. John Brown   
     
THOUGH for your sake I would not have you now      
So near to me tonight as now you are,      
God knows how much a stranger to my heart      
Was any cold word that I may have written;      
And you, poor woman that I made my wife,           5   
You have had more of loneliness, I fear,      
Than I—though I have been the most alone,      
Even when the most attended. So it was      
God set the mark of his inscrutable      
Necessity on one that was to grope,          10   
And serve, and suffer, and withal be glad      
For what was his, and is, and is to be,      
When his old bones, that are a burden now,      
Are saying what the man who carried them      
Had not the power to say. Bones in a grave,          15   
Cover them as they will with choking earth,      
May shout the truth to men who put them there,      
More than all orators. And so, my dear,      
Since you have cheated wisdom for the sake      
Of sorrow, let your sorrow be for you,          20   
This last of nights before the last of days,      
The lying ghost of what there is of me      
That is the most alive. There is no death      
For me in what they do. Their death it is      
They should heed most when the sun comes again          25   
To make them solemn. There are some I know      
Whose eyes will hardly see their occupation,      
For tears in them—and all for one old man;      
For some of them will pity this old man,      
Who took upon himself the work of God          30   
Because he pitied millions. That will be      
For them, I fancy, their compassionate      
Best way of saying what is best in them      
To say; for they can say no more than that,      
And they can do no more than what the dawn          35   
Of one more day shall give them light enough      
To do. But there are many days to be,      
And there are many men to give their blood,      
As I gave mine for them. May they come soon!      
   
May they come soon, I say. And when they come,          40   
May all that I have said unheard be heard,      
Proving at last, or maybe not—no matter—      
What sort of madness was the part of me      
That made me strike, whether I found the mark      
Or missed it. Meanwhile, I’ve a strange content,          45   
A patience, and a vast indifference      
To what men say of me and what men fear      
To say. There was a work to be begun,      
And when the Voice, that I have heard so long,      
Announced as in a thousand silences          50   
An end of preparation, I began      
The coming work of death which is to be,      
That life may be. There is no other way      
Than the old way of war for a new land      
That will not know itself and is tonight          55   
A stranger to itself, and to the world      
A more prodigious upstart among states      
Than I was among men, and so shall be      
Till they are told and told, and told again;      
For men are children, waiting to be told,          60   
And most of them are children all their lives.      
The good God in his wisdom had them so,      
That now and then a madman or a seer      
May shake them out of their complacency      
And shame them into deeds. The major file          65   
See only what their fathers may have seen,      
Or may have said they saw when they saw nothing.      
I do not say it matters what they saw.      
Now and again to some lone soul or other      
God speaks, and there is hanging to be done,—          70   
As once there was a burning of our bodies      
Alive, albeit our souls were sorry fuel.      
But now the fires are few, and we are poised      
Accordingly, for the state’s benefit,      
A few still minutes between heaven and earth.          75   
The purpose is, when they have seen enough      
Of what it is that they are not to see,      
To pluck me as an unripe fruit of treason,      
And then to fling me back to the same earth      
Of which they are, as I suppose, the flower—          80   
Not given to know the riper fruit that waits      
For a more comprehensive harvesting.      
   
Yes, may they come, and soon. Again I say,      
May they come soon!—before too many of them      
Shall be the bloody cost of our defection.          85   
When hell waits on the dawn of a new state,      
Better it were that hell should not wait long,—      
Or so it is I see it who should see      
As far or farther into time tonight      
Than they who talk and tremble for me now,          90   
Or wish me to those everlasting fires      
That are for me no fear. Too many fires      
Have sought me out and seared me to the bone—      
Thereby, for all I know, to temper me      
For what was mine to do. If I did ill          95   
What I did well, let men say I was mad;      
Or let my name for ever be a question      
That will not sleep in history. What men say      
I was will cool no cannon, dull no sword,      
Invalidate no truth. Meanwhile, I was;         100   
And the long train is lighted that shall burn,      
Though floods of wrath may drench it, and hot feet      
May stamp it for a slight time into smoke      
That shall blaze up again with growing speed,      
Until at last a fiery crash will come         105   
To cleanse and shake a wounded hemisphere,      
And heal it of a long malignity      
That angry time discredits and disowns.      
   
Tonight there are men saying many things;      
And some who see life in the last of me         110   
Will answer first the coming call to death;      
For death is what is coming, and then life.      
I do not say again for the dull sake      
Of speech what you have heard me say before,      
But rather for the sake of all I am,         115   
And all God made of me. A man to die      
As I do must have done some other work      
Than man’s alone. I was not after glory,      
But there was glory with me, like a friend,      
Throughout those crippling years when friends were few,         120   
And fearful to be known by their own names      
When mine was vilified for their approval.      
Yet friends they are, and they did what was given      
Their will to do; they could have done no more.      
I was the one man mad enough, it seems,         125   
To do my work; and now my work is over.      
And you, my dear, are not to mourn for me,      
Or for your sons, more than a soul should mourn      
In Paradise, done with evil and with earth.      
There is not much of earth in what remains         130   
For you; and what there may be left of it      
For your endurance you shall have at last      
In peace, without the twinge of any fear      
For my condition; for I shall be done      
With plans and actions that have heretofore         135   
Made your days long and your nights ominous      
With darkness and the many distances      
That were between us. When the silence comes,      
I shall in faith be nearer to you then      
Than I am now in fact. What you see now         140   
Is only the outside of an old man,      
Older than years have made him. Let him die,      
And let him be a thing for little grief.      
There was a time for service and he served;      
And there is no more time for anything         145   
But a short gratefulness to those who gave      
Their scared allegiance to an enterprise      
That has the name of treason—which will serve      
As well as any other for the present.      
There are some deeds of men that have no names,         150   
And mine may like as not be one of them.      
I am not looking far for names tonight.      
The King of Glory was without a name      
Until men gave Him one; yet there He was,      
Before we found Him and affronted Him         155   
With numerous ingenuities of evil,      
Of which one, with His aid, is to be swept      
And washed out of the world with fire and blood.      
   
Once I believed it might have come to pass      
With a small cost of blood; but I was dreaming—         160   
Dreaming that I believed. The Voice I heard      
When I left you behind me in the north,—      
To wait there and to wonder and grow old      
Of loneliness,—told only what was best,      
And with a saving vagueness, I should know         165   
Till I knew more. And had I known even then—      
After grim years of search and suffering,      
So many of them to end as they began—      
After my sickening doubts and estimations      
Of plans abandoned and of new plans vain—         170   
After a weary delving everywhere      
For men with every virtue but the Vision—      
Could I have known, I say, before I left you      
That summer morning, all there was to know—      
Even unto the last consuming word         175   
That would have blasted every mortal answer      
As lightning would annihilate a leaf,      
I might have trembled on that summer morning;      
I might have wavered; and I might have failed.      
   
And there are many among men today         180   
To say of me that I had best have wavered.      
So has it been, so shall it always be,      
For those of us who give ourselves to die      
Before we are so parcelled and approved      
As to be slaughtered by authority.         185   
We do not make so much of what they say      
As they of what our folly says of us;      
They give us hardly time enough for that,      
And thereby we gain much by losing little.      
Few are alive to-day with less to lose.         190   
Than I who tell you this, or more to gain;      
And whether I speak as one to be destroyed      
For no good end outside his own destruction,      
Time shall have more to say than men shall hear      
Between now and the coming of that harvest         195   
Which is to come. Before it comes, I go—      
By the short road that mystery makes long      
For man’s endurance of accomplishment.      
I shall have more to say when I am dead.