Page:Collected poems Robinson, Edwin Arlington.djvu/346

 Have staggered under laurel here to boast Above me, dying, while you lean In triumph awkward and unclean, About some words of his that you have read? Thing, do I not know them all? He tells me how the storied leaves that fall Are tramped on, being dead? They are sometimes: with a storm foul enough They are seized alive and they are blown far off To mould on islands.—What else have you read? He tells me that great kings look very small When they are put to bed; And this being said, He tells me that the battles I have won Are not my own, But his—howbeit fame will yet atone For all defect, and sheave the mystery: The follies and the slaughters I have done Are mine alone, And so far History. So be the tale again retold And leaf by clinging leaf unrolled Where I have written in the dawn, With ink that fades anon, Like Cæsar's, and the way be as of old.

Ho, is it you? I thought you were a ghost. Is it time for you to poison me again? Well, here's our friend the rain,— Mironton, mironton, mirontaine  Man, I could murder you almost, You with your pills and toast. Take it away and eat it, and shoot rats. Ha! there he comes. Your rat will never fail, My punctual assassin, to prevail—