The Man Against the Sky Part 4

Meanwhile we do no harm; for they That with a G.o.d have striven, Not hearing much of what we say, Take what the G.o.d has given; Though like waves breaking it may be, Or like a changed familiar tree, Or like a stairway to the sea Where down the blind are driven.

Old Trails

(Washington Square)

I met him, as one meets a ghost or two, Between the gray Arch and the old Hotel.

"King Solomon was right, there's nothing new,"

Said he. "Behold a ruin who meant well."

He led me down familiar steps again, Appealingly, and set me in a chair.

"My dreams have all come true to other men,"

Said he; "G.o.d lives, however, and why care?

"An hour among the ghosts will do no harm."

He laughed, and something glad within me sank.

I may have eyed him with a faint alarm, For now his laugh was lost in what he drank.

"They chill things here with ice from h.e.l.l," he said; "I might have known it." And he made a face That showed again how much of him was dead, And how much was alive and out of place,

And out of reach. He knew as well as I That all the words of wise men who are skilled In using them are not much to defy What comes when memory meets the unfulfilled.

What evil and infirm perversity Had been at work with him to bring him back?

Never among the ghosts, a.s.suredly, Would he originate a new attack;

Never among the ghosts, or anywhere, Till what was dead of him was put away, Would he attain to his offended share Of honor among others of his day.

"You ponder like an owl," he said at last; "You always did, and here you have a cause.

For I'm a confirmation of the past, A vengeance, and a flowering of what was.

"Sorry? Of course you are, though you compress, With even your most impenetrable fears, A placid and a proper consciousness Of anxious angels over my arrears.

"I see them there against me in a book As large as hope, in ink that shines by night.

For sure I see; but now I'd rather look At you, and you are not a pleasant sight.

"Forbear, forgive. Ten years are on my soul, And on my conscience. I've an incubus: My one distinction, and a parlous toll To glory; but hope lives on clamorous.

"'Twas hope, though heaven I grant you knows of what-- The kind that blinks and rises when it falls, Whether it sees a reason why or not-- That heard Broadway's hard-throated siren-calls;

"'Twas hope that brought me through December storms, To sh.o.r.es again where I'll not have to be A lonely man with only foreign worms To cheer him in his last obscurity.

"But what it was that hurried me down here To be among the ghosts, I leave to you.

My thanks are yours, no less, for one thing clear: Though you are silent, what you say is true.

"There may have been the devil in my feet, For down I blundered, like a fugitive, To find the old room in Eleventh Street.

G.o.d save us!--I came here again to live."

We rose at that, and all the ghosts rose then, And followed us unseen to his old room.

No longer a good place for living men We found it, and we shivered in the gloom.

The goods he took away from there were few, And soon we found ourselves outside once more, Where now the lamps along the Avenue Bloomed white for miles above an iron floor.

"Now lead me to the newest of hotels,"

He said, "and let your spleen be undeceived: This ruin is not myself, but some one else; I haven't failed; I've merely not achieved."

Whether he knew or not, he laughed and dined With more of an immune regardlessness Of pits before him and of sands behind Than many a child at forty would confess;

And after, when the bells in 'Boris' rang Their tumult at the Metropolitan, He rocked himself, and I believe he sang.

"G.o.d lives," he crooned aloud, "and I'm the man!"

He was. And even though the creature spoiled All prophecies, I cherish his acclaim.

Three weeks he fattened; and five years he toiled In Yonkers,--and then sauntered into fame.

And he may go now to what streets he will-- Eleventh, or the last, and little care; But he would find the old room very still Of evenings, and the ghosts would all be there.

I doubt if he goes after them; I doubt If many of them ever come to him.

His memories are like lamps, and they go out; Or if they burn, they flicker and are dim.

A light of other gleams he has to-day And adulations of applauding hosts; A famous danger, but a safer way Than growing old alone among the ghosts.

But we may still be glad that we were wrong: He fooled us, and we'd shrivel to deny it; Though sometimes when old echoes ring too long, I wish the bells in 'Boris' would be quiet.

The Unforgiven

When he, who is the unforgiven, Beheld her first, he found her fair: No promise ever dreamt in heaven Could then have lured him anywhere That would have been away from there; And all his wits had lightly striven, Foiled with her voice, and eyes, and hair.

There's nothing in the saints and sages To meet the shafts her glances had, Or such as hers have had for ages To blind a man till he be glad, And humble him till he be mad.

The story would have many pages, And would be neither good nor bad.

And, having followed, you would find him Where properly the play begins; But look for no red light behind him-- No fumes of many-colored sins, Fanned high by screaming violins.

G.o.d knows what good it was to blind him, Or whether man or woman wins.

And by the same eternal token, Who knows just how it will all end?-- This drama of hard words unspoken, This fireside farce, without a friend Or enemy to comprehend What augurs when two lives are broken, And fear finds nothing left to mend.

He stares in vain for what awaits him, And sees in Love a coin to toss; He smiles, and her cold hush berates him Beneath his hard half of the cross; They wonder why it ever was; And she, the unforgiving, hates him More for her lack than for her loss.

He feeds with pride his indecision, And shrinks from what will not occur, Bequeathing with infirm derision His ashes to the days that were, Before she made him prisoner; And labors to retrieve the vision That he must once have had of her.

He waits, and there awaits an ending, And he knows neither what nor when; But no magicians are attending To make him see as he saw then, And he will never find again The face that once had been the rending Of all his purpose among men.