Page:Collected poems Robinson, Edwin Arlington.djvu/349

 {And we who leave him say we do not know How much is ended or how much begun. So men have said before of many a one; So men may say of us when Time shall throw Such earth as may be needful to bestow On you and me the covering hush we shun.

Well hated, better loved, he played and lost, And left us; and we smile at his arrears; And who are we to know what it all cost, Or what we may have wrung from him, the buyer? The pageant of his failure-laden years Told ruin of high price. The place was higher.

never knew the sorrow or the pain Within him, for he seemed as one asleep— Until he faced us with a dying leap, And with a blast of paramount, profane, And vehement valediction did explain To each of us, in words that we shall keep, Why we were not to wonder or to weep, Or ever dare to wish him back again.

He may be now an amiable shade, With merry fellow-phantoms unafraid Around him—but we do not ask. We know That he would rise and haunt us horribly, And be with us o' nights of a certainty. Did we not hear him when he told us so?