POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
And whom he had not heard from for twenty years,
Had "crossed," as Albert liked to say,
And had left him a fortune indeed.
Albert sent for steamship folders;
But a dubious July
Was followed by a frenetic August.
The ancient world,
So grandiose and so romantic
To Albert's steadfast eyes,
Went mad.
"'Man marks the earth with ruin,'" he mused;
"But 'his control—Stops with the . . . .'"
Yet the sea itself was become a shambles,
And the realm of faery, beyond,
A trampled mire of blood and wreckage.
Albert stood on the brink of things, as ever.
But the earth heaved beneath his feet,
And the fabric reared through forty years fell in ruin on his head.
"There will be no peace in my time," he murmured;
"Nor any salve in generations.
For me there is no world at all—
What is my million, here?"
Albert retired.
He studied the stripes in the wall-paper
[244]
