Grant we the demon sees An inch beyond the line, What comes of mine and thine? A thousand here and there may shriek and freeze, Or they may starve in fine. The Old Physician has a crimson cure For such as these, And ages after ages will endure The minims of it that are victories, The wreath may go from brow to brow, The state may flourish, flame, and cease; But through the fury and the flood somehow The demons are acquainted and at ease, And somewhat hard to please. Mine, I believe, is laughing at me now In his primordial way, Quite as he laughed of old at Hannibal, Or rather at Alexander, let us say. Therefore, be what you may, Time has no further need Of you, or of your breed. My demon, irretrievably astray, Has ruined the last chorus of a play That will, so he avers, be played again some day; And you, poor glowering ghost, Have staggered under laurel here to boast Above me, dying, while you lean In triumph awkward and unclean, About some words of his that you have read? Thing, do I not know them all? He tells me how the storied leaves that fall Are tramped on, being dead? They are sometimes: with a storm foul enough They are seized alive and they are blown far off To mould on islands.--What else have you read? He tells me that great kings look very small When they are put to bed; And this being said, He tells me that the battles I have won Are not my own, But his--howbeit fame will yet atone For all defect, and sheave the mystery: The follies and the slaughters I have done Are mine alone, And so far History. So be the tale again retold And leaf by clinging leaf unrolled Where I have written in the dawn, With ink that fades anon, Like Cæsar’s, and the way be as of old. Ho, is it you? I thought you were a ghost. Is it time for you to poison me again? Well, here’s our friend the rain,-- _Mironton, mironton, mirontaine...._ Man, I could murder you almost, You with your pills and toast. Take it away and eat it, and shoot rats. Ha! there he comes. Your rat will never fail, My punctual assassin, to prevail-- While he has power to crawl, Or teeth to gnaw withal-- Where kings are caged. Why has a king no cats? What!-- You say that I’ll achieve it if I try? Swallow it?--No, not I.... God, what a way to die! CALVERLY’S CALVERLY’S We go no more to Calverly’s, For there the lights are few and low; And who are there to see by them, Or what they see, we do not know. Poor strangers of another tongue May now creep in from anywhere, And we, forgotten, be no more Than twilight on a ruin there.