"Why, then, the Mermaid Inn should swallow this," The voice of Shakespeare quietly broke in, As laying a hand on either shoulder of Kit He stood behind him in the gloom and smiled Across the table at Ben, whose eyes still blazed With boyhood's generous wrath. "Rob was a poet. And had I known ... no matter! I am sorry He thought I wronged him. His heart's blood beats in this. Look, where he says he dies forsaken, Kit!" "Died drunk, more like," growled Ben. "And if he did," Will answered, "none was there to help him home, Had not a poor old cobbler chanced upon him, Dying in the streets, and taken him to his house, And let him break his heart on his own bed. Read his last words. You know he left his wife And played the moth at tavern tapers, burnt His wings and dropt into the mud. Read here, His dying words to his forsaken wife, Written in blood, Ben, blood. Read it, '_I charge thee, Doll, by the love of our youth, by my soul's rest, See this man paid! Had he not succoured me I had died in the streets._' How young he was to call Thus on their poor dead youth, this withered shadow That once was Robin Greene. He left a child-- See--in its face he prays her not to find The father's, but her own. '_He is yet green And may grow straight_,' so flickers his last jest, Then out for ever. At the last he begged A penny-pott of malmsey. In the bill, All's printed now for crows and daws to peck, You'll find four shillings for his winding sheet. He had the poet's heart and God help all Who have that heart and somehow lose their way For lack of helm, souls that are blown abroad By the great winds of passion, without power To sway them, chartless captains. Multitudes ply Trimly enough from bank to bank of Thames Like shallow wherries, while tall galleons, Out of their very beauty driven to dare The uncompassed sea, founder in starless nights, And all that we can say is--'They died drunk!'"