Page:Collected poems Robinson, Edwin Arlington.djvu/53

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COLLECTED POEMS

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 menWe 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 AvenueBloomed 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 dinedWith more of an immune regardlessnessOf pits before him and of sands behindThan many a child at forty would confess;
And after, when the bells in Boris rangTheir 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 spoiledAll prophecies, I cherish his acclaim.Three weeks he fattened; and five years he toiledIn 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 stillOf evenings, and the ghosts would all be there.

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