Page:Collected poems Robinson, Edwin Arlington.djvu/348

 No Lingard with his eerie joy, No Clavering, no Calverly.

We cannot have them here with us To say where their light lives are gone, Or if they be of other stuff Than are the moons of Ilion. So, be their place of one estate With ashes, echoes, and old wars, Or ever we be of the night, Or we be lost among the stars.

no,—forget your Cricket and your Ant, For I shall never set my name to theirs That now bespeak the very sons and heirs Incarnate of Queen Gossip and King Cant. The case of Leffingwell is mixed, I grant, And futile seems the burden that he bears; But are we sounding his forlorn affairs Who brand him parasite and sycophant?

I tell you, Leffingwell was more than these; And if he prove a rather sorry knight, What quiverings in the distance of what light May not have lured him with high promises, And then gone down?—He may have been deceived; He may have lied,—he did; and he believed.

dirge is over, the good work is done, All as he would have had it, and we go;