Llewellyn and the Tree

Could he have made Priscilla share

       &nbsp The paradise that he had planned,

Llewellyn would have loved his wife

       &nbsp As well as any in the land.



Could he have made Priscilla cease

       &nbsp To goad him for what God left out,

Llewellyn would have been as mild

       &nbsp As any we have read about.



Could all have been as all was not,

       &nbsp Llewellyn would have had no story;

He would have stayed a quiet man

       &nbsp And gone his quiet way to glory.



But howsoever mild he was

       &nbsp Priscilla was implacable;

And whatsoever timid hopes

       &nbsp He built—she found them, and they fell.



And this went on, with intervals

       &nbsp Of labored harmony between

Resounding discords, till at last

       &nbsp Llewellyn turned—as will be seen.



Priscilla, warmer than her name,

       &nbsp And shriller than the sound of saws,

Pursued Llewellyn once too far,

       &nbsp Not knowing quite the man he was.



The more she said, the fiercer clung

       &nbsp The stinging garment of his wrath;

And this was all before the day

       &nbsp When Time tossed roses in his path.



Before the roses ever came

       &nbsp Llewellyn had already risen.

The roses may have ruined him,

       &nbsp They may have kept him out of prison.



And she who brought them, being Fate,

       &nbsp Made roses do the work of spears,—

Though many made no more of her

       &nbsp Than civet, coral, rouge, and years.



You ask us what Llewellyn saw,

       &nbsp But why ask what may not be given?

To some will come a time when change

       &nbsp Itself is beauty, if not heaven.



One afternoon Priscilla spoke,

       &nbsp And her shrill history was done;

At any rate, she never spoke

       &nbsp Like that again to anyone.



One gold October afternoon

       &nbsp Great fury smote the silent air;

And then Llewellyn leapt and fled

       &nbsp Like one with hornets in his hair.



Llewellyn left us, and he said

       &nbsp Forever, leaving few to doubt him;

And so, through frost and clicking leaves,

       &nbsp The Tilbury way went on without him.



And slowly, through the Tilbury mist,

       &nbsp The stillness of October gold

Went out like beauty from a face.

       &nbsp Priscilla watched it, and grew old.



He fled, still clutching in his flight

       &nbsp The roses that had been his fall;

The Scarlet One, as you surmise,

       &nbsp Fled with him, coral, rouge, and all.



Priscilla, waiting, saw the change

       &nbsp Of twenty slow October moons;

And then she vanished, in her turn

       &nbsp To be forgotten, like old tunes.



So they were gone—all three of them,

       &nbsp I should have said, and said no more,

Had not a face once on Broadway

       &nbsp Been one that I had seen before.



The face and hands and hair were old,

       &nbsp But neither time nor penury

Could quench within Llewellyn's eyes

       &nbsp The shine of his one victory.



The roses, faded and gone by,

       &nbsp Left ruin where they once had reigned;

But on the wreck, as on old shells,

       &nbsp The color of the rose remained.



His fictive merchandise I bought

       &nbsp For him to keep and show again,

Then led him slowly from the crush

       &nbsp Of his cold-shouldered fellow men.



"And so, Llewellyn," I began—

       &nbsp "Not so," he said; "not so, at all:

I've tried the world, and found it good,

       &nbsp For more than twenty years this fall.



"And what the world has left of me

       &nbsp Will go now in a little while."

And what the world had left of him

       &nbsp Was partly an unholy guile.



"That I have paid for being calm

       &nbsp Is what you see, if you have eyes;

For let a man be calm too long,

       &nbsp He pays for much before he dies.



"Be calm when you are growing old

       &nbsp And you have nothing else to do;

Pour not the wine of life too thin

       &nbsp If water means the death of you.



"You say I might have learned at home

       &nbsp The truth in season to be strong?

Not so; I took the wine of life

       &nbsp Too thin, and I was calm too long.



"Like others who are strong too late,

       &nbsp For me there was no going back;

For I had found another speed,

       &nbsp And I was on the other track.



"God knows how far I might have gone

       &nbsp Or what there might have been to see;

But my speed had a sudden end,

       &nbsp And here you have the end of me."



The end or not, it may be now

       &nbsp But little farther from the truth

To say those worn satiric eyes

       &nbsp Had something of immortal youth.



He may among the millions here

       &nbsp Be one; or he may, quite as well,

Be gone to find again the Tree

       &nbsp Of Knowledge, out of which he fell.



He may be near us, dreaming yet

       &nbsp Of unrepented rouge and coral;

Or in a grave without a name

       &nbsp May be as far off as a moral.