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| THE MAN 1 Flammonde, from God knows where, | |
| With firm address and foreign air, | |
| With news of nations in his talk | |
| And something royal in his walk, | |
| With glint of iron in his eyes, | 5 |
| But never doubt, nor yet surprise, | |
| Appeared, and stayed, and held his head | |
| As one by kings accredited. | |
| |
| Erect, with his alert repose | |
| About him, and about his clothes, | 10 |
| He pictured all tradition hears | |
| Of what we owe to fifty years. | |
| His cleansing heritage of taste | |
| Paraded neither want nor waste; | |
| And what he needed for his fee | 15 |
| To live, he borrowed graciously. | |
| |
| He never told us what he was, | |
| Or what mischance, or other cause, | |
| Had banished him from better days | |
| To play the Prince of Castaways. | 20 |
| Meanwhile he played surpassing well | |
| A part, for most, unplayable; | |
| In fine, one pauses, half afraid | |
| To say for certain that he played. | |
| |
| For that, one may as well forego | 25 |
| Conviction as to yes or no; | |
| Nor can I say just how intense | |
| Would then have been the difference | |
| To several, who, having striven | |
| In vain to get what he was given, | 30 |
| Would see the stranger taken on | |
| By friends not easy to be won. | |
| |
| Moreover, many a malcontent | |
| He soothed and found munificent; | |
| His courtesy beguiled and foiled | 35 |
| Suspicion that his years were soiled; | |
| His mien distinguished any crowd, | |
| His credit strengthened when he bowed; | |
| And women, young and old, were fond | |
| Of looking at the man Flammonde. | 40 |
| |
| There was a woman in our town | |
| On whom the fashion was to frown; | |
| But while our talk renewed the tinge | |
| Of a long-faded scarlet fringe, | |
| The man Flammonde saw none of that, | 45 |
| And what he saw we wondered at— | |
| That none of us, in her distress, | |
| Could hide or find our littleness. | |
| |
| There was a boy that all agreed | |
| Had shut within him the rare seed | 50 |
| Of learning. We could understand, | |
| But none of us could lift a hand. | |
| The man Flammonde appraised the youth, | |
| And told a few of us the truth; | |
| And thereby, for a little gold, | 55 |
| A flowered future was unrolled. | |
| |
| There were two citizens who fought | |
| For years and years, and over nought; | |
| They made life awkward for their friends, | |
| And shortened their own dividends. | 60 |
| The man Flammonde said what was wrong | |
| Should be made right, nor was it long | |
| Before they were again in line, | |
| And had each other in to dine. | |
| |
| And these I mention are but four | 65 |
| Of many out of many more. | |
| So much for them. But what of him— | |
| So firm in every look and limb? | |
| What small satanic sort of kink | |
| Was in his brain? What broken link | 70 |
| Withheld him from the destinies | |
| That came so near to being his? | |
| |
| What was he, when we came to sift | |
| His meaning, and to note the drift | |
| Of incommunicable ways | 75 |
| That make us ponder while we praise? | |
| Why was it that his charm revealed | |
| Somehow the surface of a shield? | |
| What was it that we never caught? | |
| What was he, and what was he not? | 80 |
| |
| How much it was of him we met | |
| We cannot ever know; nor yet | |
| Shall all he gave us quite atone | |
| For what was his, and his alone; | |
| Nor need we now, since he knew best, | 85 |
| Nourish an ethical unrest: | |
| Rarely at once will nature give | |
| The power to be Flammonde and live. | |
| |
| We cannot know how much we learn | |
| From those who never will return, | 90 |
| Until a flash of unforeseen | |
| Remembrance falls on what has been. | |
| We’ve each a darkening hill to climb; | |
| And this is why, from time to time | |
| In Tilbury Town, we look beyond | 95 |
| Horizons for the man Flammonde. | |
