o great a sum;
And that is all they paid me, every penny.
Salt water, that is all the drink I taste
On this rough island. Somebody has taught
The sea-gulls how to wail around my hut
All night, like lost souls. And there is a face,
A dead man's face that laughs in every storm,
And sleeps in every pool along the coast.
I thought it was my own, once. But I know
These actions never, never, on God's earth,
Will turn out to their credit, who believe
That I drink blood._"
He crumpled up the letter
And tossed it into the fire.
"Galen," said Ben,
"I think you are right--that one should pity villains."

* * * *

The clock struck twelve. The bells began to peal.
We drank a cup of sack to the New Year.
"New songs, new voices, all as fresh as may,"
Said Ben to Brome, "but I shall never live
To hear them."

All was not so well, indeed,
With Ben, as hitherto. Age had come upon him.
He dragged one foot as in paralysis.
The critics bayed against the old lion, now,
And called him arrogant. "My brain," he said,
"Is yet unhurt although, set round with pain,
It cannot long hold out." He never stooped,
Never once pandered to that brainless hour.
His coat was thread-bare. Weeks had passed of late
Without his voice resounding in our inn.

"The statues are defiled, the gods dethroned,
The Ionian movement reigns, not the free soul.
And, as for me, I have lived too long," he said.
"Well--I can weave the old threnodies anew."
And, filling his cup, he murmured, soft and low,
A new song, breaking on an ancient shore:

I

Marlowe is dead, and Greene is in his grave,
And sweet Will Shakespeare long ago is gone!
Our Ocean-shepherd sleeps beneath the wave;
Robin is dead, and Marlowe in his grave.
Why should I stay to chant an idle stave,
And in my Mermaid Tavern drink alone?
For Kit is dead and Greene is in his grave,
And sweet Will Shakespeare long ago is gone.

II

Where is the singer of the Faerie Queen?
Where are the lyric lips of Astrophel?
Long, long ago, their quiet graves were green;
Ay, and the grave, too, of their Faerie Queen!
And yet their faces, hovering here unseen,
Call me to taste their new-found oenomel;
To sup w