Page:Collected poems Robinson, Edwin Arlington.djvu/35

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COLLECTED POEMS

Bereft of her with whom his lifeWas harmony without a flaw,He took no other for a wife,Nor sighed for any that he saw;And if he doubted his two sons,And heirs, Alexis and Evander,He might have been as doubtful onceOf Robert Burns and Alexander.
Alexis, in his early youth,Began to steal—from old and young.Likewise Evander, and the truthWas like a bad taste on his tongue.Born thieves and liars, their affairSeemed only to be tarred with evil—The most insufferable pairOf scamps that ever cheered the devil.
The world went on, their fame went on,And they went on from bad to worse;Till, goaded hot with nothing done,And each accoutred with a curse,The friends of Old King Cole, by twos,And fours, and sevens, and elevens,Pronounced unalterable viewsOf doings that were not of heaven's.
And having learned again wherebyTheir baleful zeal had come about,King Cole met many a wrathful eyeSo kindly that its wrath went out—Or partly out. Say what they would,He seemed the more to court their candor;But never told what kind of goodWas in Alexis and Evander.

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