Edwin Arlington Robinson - Llewellyn and the Tree lyrics

Could he have made Priscilla share   The paradise that he had planned, Llewellyn would have loved his wife   As well as any in the land. Could he have made Priscilla cease   To goad him for what God left out, Llewellyn would have been as mild   As any we have read about. Could all have been as all was not,   Llewellyn would have had no story; He would have stayed a quiet man   And gone his quiet way to glory. But howsoever mild he was   Priscilla was implacable; And whatsoever timid hopes   He built—she found them, and they fell. And this went on, with intervals   Of labored harmony between Resounding discords, till at last   Llewellyn turned—as will be seen. Priscilla, warmer than her name,   And shriller than the sound of saws, Pursued Llewellyn once too far,   Not knowing quite the man he was. The more she said, the fiercer clung   The stinging garment of his wrath; And this was all before the day   When Time tossed roses in his path. Before the roses ever came   Llewellyn had already risen. The roses may have ruined him,   They may have kept him out of prison. And she who brought them, being Fate,   Made roses do the work of spears,— Though many made no more of her   Than civet, coral, rouge, and years. You ask us what Llewellyn saw,   But why ask what may not be given? To some will come a time when change   Itself is beauty, if not heaven. One afternoon Priscilla spoke,   And her shrill history was done; At any rate, she never spoke   Like that again to anyone. One gold October afternoon   Great fury smote the silent air; And then Llewellyn leapt and fled   Like one with hornets in his hair. Llewellyn left us, and he said   Forever, leaving few to doubt him; And so, through frost and clicking leaves,   The Tilbury way went on without him. And slowly, through the Tilbury mist,   The stillness of October gold Went out like beauty from a face.   Priscilla watched it, and grew old. He fled, still clutching in his flight   The roses that had been his fall; The Scarlet One, as you surmise,   Fled with him, coral, rouge, and all. Priscilla, waiting, saw the change   Of twenty slow October moons; And then she vanished, in her turn   To be forgotten, like old tunes. So they were gone—all three of them,   I should have said, and said no more, Had not a face once on Broadway   Been one that I had seen before. The face and hands and hair were old,   But neither time nor penury Could quench within Llewellyn's eyes   The shine of his one victory. The roses, faded and gone by,   Left ruin where they once had reigned; But on the wreck, as on old shells,   The color of the rose remained. His fictive merchandise I bought   For him to keep and show again, Then led him slowly from the crush   Of his cold-shouldered fellow men. "And so, Llewellyn," I began—   "Not so," he said; "not so, at all: I've tried the world, and found it good,   For more than twenty years this fall. "And what the world has left of me   Will go now in a little while." And what the world had left of him   Was partly an unholy guile. "That I have paid for being calm   Is what you see, if you have eyes; For let a man be calm too long,   He pays for much before he dies. "Be calm when you are growing old   And you have nothing else to do; Pour not the wine of life too thin   If water means the d**h of you. "You say I might have learned at home   The truth in season to be strong? Not so; I took the wine of life   Too thin, and I was calm too long. "Like others who are strong too late,   For me there was no going back; For I had found another speed,   And I was on the other track. "God knows how far I might have gone   Or what there might have been to see; But my speed had a sudden end,   And here you have the end of me." The end or not, it may be now   But little farther from the truth To say those worn satiric eyes   Had something of immortal youth. He may among the millions here   Be one; or he may, quite as well, Be gone to find again the Tree   Of Knowledge, out of which he fell. He may be near us, dreaming yet   Of unrepented rouge and coral; Or in a grave without a name   May be as far off as a moral.