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. We two, the remnant. All the rest Are cold and quiet. You nor I, Nor fiddle now, nor flagon-lid, May ring them back from where they lie. No fame delays oblivion For them, but something yet survives: A record written fair, could we But read the book of scattered lives. There’ll be a page for Leffingwell, And one for Lingard, the Moon-calf; And who knows what for Clavering, Who died because he couldn’t laugh? Who knows or cares? No sign is here, No face, no voice, no memory; No Lingard with his eerie joy, No Clavering, no Calverly. We cannot have them here with us To say where their light lives are gone, Or if they be of other stuff Than are the moons of Ilion. So, be their place of one estate With ashes, echoes, and old wars,— Or ever we be of the night, Or we be lost among the stars.

No, no,—forget your Cricket and your Ant, For I shall never set my name to theirs That now bespeak the very sons and heirs Incarnate of Queen Gossip and King Cant. The case of Leffingwell is mixed, I grant, And futile seems the burden that he bears; But are we sounding his forlorn affairs Who brand him parasite and sycophant? I tell you, Leffingwell was more than these; And if he prove a rather sorry knight, What quiverings in the distance of what light May not have lured him with high promises, And then gone down?—He may have been deceived; He may have lied,—he did; and he believed.

The dirge is over, the good work is done, All as he would have had it, and we go; And we who leave him say we do not know How much is ended or how much begun. So men have said before of many a one; So men may say of us when Time shall throw Such earth as may be needful to bestow On you and me the covering hush we shun. Well hated, better loved, he played and lost, And left us; and we smile at his arrears; And who are we to know what it all cost, Or what we may have wrung from him, the buyer? The pageant of his failure-laden years Told ruin of high price. The place was higher.

We never knew the sorrow or the pain Within him, for he seemed as one asleep— Until he faced us with a dying leap, And with a blast of paramount, profane, And vehement valediction did explain To each of us, in words that we shall keep, Why we were not to wonder or to weep, Or ever dare to wish him back again. He may be now an amiable shade, With merry fellow-phantoms unafraid Around him—but we do not ask. We know That he would rise and haunt us horribly, And be with us o’ nights of a certainty. Did we not hear him when he told us so?

I say no more for Clavering Than I should say of him who fails To bring his wounded vessel home When reft of rudder and of sails; I say no more than I should say Of any other one who sees Too far for guidance of to-day, Too near for the eternities. I think of him as I should think Of one who for scant wages played, And faintly, a flawed instrument That fell while it was being made; I think of him as one who fared, Unfaltering and undeceived, Amid mirages of renown And urgings of the unachieved; I think of him as one who gave To Lingard leave to be amused, And listened with a patient grace That we, the wise ones, had refused; I think of metres that he wrote For Cubit, the ophidian guest: “What Lilith, or Dark Lady” ... Well, Time swallows Cubit with the rest. I think of last words that he said One midnight over Calverly: “Good-by—good man.” He was not good; So Clavering was wrong, you see. I wonder what had come to pass Could he have borrowed for a spell The fiery-frantic indolence That made a ghost of Leffingwell; I wonder if he pitied us Who cautioned him till he was gray To build his house with ours on earth And have an end of yesterday; I wonder what it was we saw To make us think that we were strong; I wonder if he saw too much, Or if he looked one way too long. But when were thoughts or wonderings To ferret out the man within? Why prate of what he seemed to be, And all that he might not have been? He clung to phantoms and to friends, And never came to anything. He left a wreath on Cubit’s grave. I say no more for Clavering.

The table hurled itself, to our surprise, At Lingard, and anon rapped eagerly: “When earth is cold and there is no more sea, There will be what was Lingard. Otherwise, Why lure the race to ruin through the skies? And why have Leffingwell, or Calverly?”— “I wish the ghost would give his name,” said he; And searching gratitude was in his eyes. He stood then by the window for a time, And only after the last midnight chime Smote the day dead did he say anything: “Come out, my little one, the stars are bright; Come out, you lælaps, and inhale the night.” And so he went away with Clavering.