Yet never once put in; and then arose
Dame Rumour with a hundred thousand tongues,
And people said that he had bust his wires,
And had neuralgia in his sounding-board,
And the dyspepsia in his pedal joint,
And the stricnosis in his upper keys,—
Yet all was false, and I will tell you why.
The day before he was to have gone in
Unto his glory in Benicia,
There came a visitor whose sun-grilled face