| |
| I MET him as one meets a ghost or two, | |
| Between the gray Arch and the old Hotel. | |
| “King Solomon was right, there’s nothing new,” | |
| Said he. “Behold a ruin who meant well.” | |
| |
| He led me down familiar steps again, | 5 |
| Appealingly, and set me in a chair. | |
| “My dreams have all come true to other men,” | |
| Said he; “God lives, however, and why care? | |
| |
| “An hour among the ghosts will do no harm.” | |
| He laughed, and something glad within me sank. | 10 |
| I may have eyed him with a faint alarm, | |
| For now his laugh was lost in what he drank. | |
| |
| “They chill things here with ice from hell,” he said; | |
| “I might have known it.” And he made a face | |
| That showed again how much of him was dead, | 15 |
| And how much was alive and out of place, | |
| |
| And out of reach. He knew as well as I | |
| That all the words of wise men who are skilled | |
| In using them are not so much to defy | |
| What comes when memory meets the unfulfilled. | 20 |
| |
| What evil and infirm perversity | |
| Had been at work with him to bring him back? | |
| Never among the ghosts, assuredly, | |
| Would he originate a new attack; | |
| |
| Never among the ghosts, or anywhere, | 25 |
| Till what was dead of him was put away, | |
| Would he attain to his offended share | |
| Of honour among others of his day. | |
| |
| “You ponder like an owl,” he said at last; | |
| “You always did, and here you have a cause. | 30 |
| For I’m a confirmation of the past, | |
| A vengeance, and a flowering of what was. | |
| |
| “Sorry? Of course you are, though you compress, | |
| With even your most impenetrable fears, | |
| A placid and a proper consciousness | 35 |
| Of anxious angels over my arrears. | |
| |
| “I see them there against me in a book | |
| As large as hope, in ink that shines by night. | |
| For sure I see; but now I’d rather look | |
| At you, and you are not a pleasant sight. | 40 |
| |
| “Forbear, forgive. Ten years are on my soul, | |
| And on my conscience. I’ve an incubus: | |
| My one distinction, and a parlous toll | |
| To glory; but hope lives on clamorous. | |
| |
| “’Twas hope, though heaven I grant you knows of what— | 45 |
| The kind that blinks and rises when it falls, | |
| Whether it sees a reason why or not— | |
| That heard Broadway’s hard-throated siren-calls; | |
| |
| “’Twas hope that brought me through December storms, | |
| To shores again where I’ll not have to be | 50 |
| A lonely man with only foreign worms | |
| To cheer him in his last obscurity. | |
| |
| “But what it was that hurried me down here | |
| To be among the ghosts, I leave to you. | |
| My thanks are yours, no less, for one thing clear: | 55 |
| Though you are silent what you say is true. | |
| |
| “There may have been the devil in my feet, | |
| For down I blundered like a fugitive, | |
| To find the old room in Eleventh Street. | |
| God save us!—I came here again to live.” | 60 |
| |
| We rose at that, and all the ghosts rose then, | |
| And followed us unseen to his old room. | |
| No longer a good place for living men | |
| We found it, and we shivered in the gloom. | |
| |
| The goods he took away from there were few, | 65 |
| And soon we found ourselves outside once more, | |
| Where now the lights along the Avenue | |
| Bloomed white for miles above an iron floor. | |
| |
| “Now lead me to the newest of hotels,” | |
| He said, “and let your spleen be undeceived: | 70 |
| This ruin is not myself, but someone else; | |
| I haven’t failed; I’ve merely not achieved.” | |
| |
| Whether he knew or not, he laughed and dined | |
| With more of an immune regardlessness | |
| Of pits before him and of sands behind | 75 |
| Than many a child at forty would confess; | |
| |
| And after, when the bells in Boris rang | |
| Their tumult at the Metropolitan, | |
| He rocked himself, and I believe he sang. | |
| “God lives,” he crooned aloud, “and I’m the man!” | 80 |
| |
| He was. And even though the creature spoiled | |
| All prophecies, I cherish his acclaim. | |
| Three weeks he fattened; and five years he toiled | |
| In Yonkers,—and then sauntered into fame. | |
| |
| And he may go now to what streets he will— | 85 |
| Eleventh, or the last, and little care; | |
| But he would find the old room very still | |
| Of evenings, and the ghosts would all be there. | |
| |
| I doubt if he goes after them; I doubt | |
| If many of them ever come to him. | 90 |
| His memories are like lamps, and they go out; | |
| Or if they burn, they flicker and are dim. | |
| |
| A light of other gleams he has to-day | |
| And adulations of applauding hosts; | |
| A famous danger, but a safer way | 95 |
| Than growing old alone among the ghosts. | |
| |
| But we may still be glad that we were wrong; | |
| He fooled us, and we’d shrivel to deny it; | |
| Though sometimes when old echoes ring too long, | |
| I wish the bells in Boris would be quiet. | 100 |
| |
