Page:Collected poems Robinson, Edwin Arlington.djvu/70

 Priscilla, waiting, saw the change Of twenty slow October moons; And then she vanished, in her turn To he forgotten, like old tunes. So they were gone—all three of them, I should have said, and said no more, Had not a face once on Broadway Been one that I had seen before. The face and hands and hair were old, But neither time nor penury Could quench within Llewellyn's eyes The shine of his one victory. The roses, faded and gone by, Left ruin where they once had reigned; But on the wreck, as on old shells, The color of the rose remained. His fictive merchandise I bought For him to keep and show again, Then led him slowly from the crush Of his cold-shouldered fellow men. "And so, Llewellyn," I began— "Not so," he said; "not so at all: I've tried the world, and found it good, For more than twenty years this fall. "And what the world has left of me Will go now in a little while." And what the world had left of him Was partly an unholy guile.