"I can see them. Granted even I am wrong, there are the children.
And are they to praise their father for his insight if we die?
Do you hear them? Do you hear them overhead — the children — singing?
Do you hear them? Do you hear the children?"
"Damn the children!"
"Why?
What have THEY done? . . . Well, then, — do it. . . . Do it now,
and have it over."
"Oh, you devil! . . . Oh, you. . . ."
"No, I'm not a devil, I'm a prophet —
One who sees the end already of so much that one end more
Would have now the small importance of one other small illusion,
Which in turn would have a welcome where the rest have gone before.
But if I were you, my fancy would look on a little farther
For the glimpse of a release that may be somewhere still in sight.
Furthermore, you must remember those two hundred invitations
For the dancing after dinner. We shall have to shine tonight.
We shall dance, and be as happy as a pair of merry spectres,
On the grave of all the lies that we shall never have to tell;
We shall dance among the ruins of the tomb of our endurance,
And I have not a doubt that we shall do it very well.
There! — I'm glad you've put it back; for I don't like it.
Shut the drawer now.
No — no — don't cancel anything. I'll dance until I drop.
I can't walk yet, but I'm going to. . . . Go away somewhere,
and leave me. . . .
Oh, you children! Oh, you children! . . . God, will they never stop!"
Tasker Norcross
"Whether all towns and all who live in them —
So long as they be somewhere in this world
That we in our complacency call ours —
Are more or less the same, I leave to you.
I should say less. Whether or not, meanwhile,
We've all two legs — and as for that, we haven't —
There were three kinds of men where I was born:
The good, the not so good, and Tasker Norcross.
Now there are two kinds."
"Meaning, as I divine,
Your friend is dead," I ventured.
Ferguson,
Who talked himself at last out of the world
He censured, and is therefore silent now,
Agreed indifferently: "My friends are dead —
Or most of them."
"Remember one that isn't,"
I said, protesting. "Honor him for his ears;
Treasure him also for his understanding."
Ferguson sighed, and then talked on again:
"You have an overgrown alacrity
For saying nothing much and hearing less;
And I've a thankless wonder, at the start,
How much it is to you that I shall tell
What I have now to say of Tasker Norcross,
And how much to the air that is around you.
But given a patience that is not averse
To the slow tragedies of haunted men —
Horrors, in fact, if you've a skilful eye
To know them at their firesides, or out walking, —"