Page:Poetry, a magazine of verse, Volume 7 (October 1915-March 1916).djvu/315

Postponement At twenty-five he might have bought a share in the business; But, "No," he said, "I may cross over soon; Let me be foot-free, and fancy-free—no entanglements here."


 * When he was twenty-six

Adelaide Waters, tired of waiting, Married an ambitious young hardware-dealer, And on the whole did well. But Albert cared little: "She" was waiting on the other side.


 * Early he became a boarder,

And a boarder he continued to be. "Why tie myself up with property?" he asked; "The time will come, and I must be without constraint."


 * Thus, without constraint, without career, without estate,

Without home and family, He waited for the great hour, Living on slick steel-engravings, And flushed, mendacious chromo-lithographs, And ecstatic travel-books penned by forlorn English spinsters.

In the new West others wooed Fortune and won her; But Albert was spending fortune on fortune abroad Before he had fairly learned to pay his way at home. He lived in a palace on the Lung' Arno: He saw the yellow river plainly enough From the back window of the two-story frame on Ninth Street.