"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 shores 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. God 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. "God 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.