Quite heedless of that smile —
Half-devil and half-god,
Your quite unequalled style,
The airy heights you trod.
Ah, could you from earth's breast
Come back to take the air,
What matter here for jest
Most exquisite and rare!
But since you may not come,
Since silence holds you fast,
Since all your quips are dumb
And all your laughter past —
I give you mine instead,
And something with it too
That Brooklyn leaves unsaid —
The world's fine homage due.
Ah, Prince, you smile again —
"My faith, the court is small!"
I know, dear James — but then
It's I or none at all!
Flammonde. [Edwin Arlington Robinson]
The man Flammonde, from God knows where,
With firm address and foreign air,
With news of nations in his talk
And something royal in his walk,
With glint of iron in his eyes,
But never doubt, nor yet surprise,
Appeared, and stayed, and held his head
As one by kings accredited.
Erect, with his alert repose
About him, and about his clothes,
He pictured all tradition hears
Of what we owe to fifty years.
His cleansing heritage of taste
Paraded neither want nor waste;
And what he needed for his fee
To live, he borrowed graciously.
He never told us what he was,
Or what mischance, or other cause,
Had banished him from better days
To play the Prince of Castaways.
Meanwhile he played surpassing well
A part, for most, unplayable;
In fine, one pauses, half afraid
To say for certain that he played.
For that, one may as well forego
Conviction as to yes or no;
Nor can I say just how intense
Would then have been the difference
To several, who, having striven
In vain to get what he was given,
Would see the stranger taken on
By friends not easy to be won.