Nothing will hold him longer--let him go; Let him go down where others have gone down; Little he cares whether we smile or frown, Or if we know, or if we think we know. The call is on him for his overthrow, Say we; so let him rise, or let him drown. Poor fool! He plunges for the sunken crown, And we--we wait for what the plunge may show. Well, we are safe enough. Why linger, then? The watery chance was his, not ours. Poor fool! Poor truant, poor Narcissus out of school; Poor jest of Askelon; poor king of men.-- The crown, if he be wearing it, may cool His arrogance, and he may sleep again. DOCTOR OF BILLIARDS Of all among the fallen from on high, We count you last and leave you to regain Your born dominion of a life made vain By three spheres of insidious ivory. You dwindle to the lesser tragedy-- Content, you say. We call, but you remain. Nothing alive gone wrong could be so plain, Or quite so blasted with absurdity. You click away the kingdom that is yours, And you click off your crown for cap and bells; You smile, who are still master of the feast, And for your smile we credit you the least; But when your false, unhallowed laugh occurs, We seem to think there may be something else. SHADRACH O’LEARY O’Leary was a poet--for a while: He sang of many ladies frail and fair, The rolling glory of their golden hair, And emperors extinguished with a smile. They foiled his years with many an ancient wile, And if they limped, O’Leary didn’t care: He turned them loose and had them everywhere, Undoing saints and senates with their guile. But this was not the end. A year ago I met him--and to meet was to admire: Forgotten were the ladies and the lyre, And the small, ink-fed Eros of his dream. By questioning I found a man to know-- A failure spared, a Shadrach of the Gleam. HOW ANNANDALE WENT OUT “They called it Annandale--and I was there To flourish, to find words, and to attend: Liar, physician, hypocrite, and friend, I watched him; and the sight was not so fair As one or two that I have seen elsewhere: An apparatus not for me to mend-- A wreck, with hell between him and the end, Remained of Annandale; and I was there. “I knew the ruin as I knew the man; So put the two together, if you can, Remembering the worst you know of me. Now view yourself as I was, on the spot-- With a slight kind of engine. Do you see? Like this.... You wouldn’t hang me? I thought not.” ALMA MATER