"Ben, you're a scholar, what's the time of day?"Says he; and there shines out of him again An aged light that has no age or station --The mystery that's his -- a mischievous Half-mad serenity that laughs at fame For being won so easy, and at friends Who laugh at him for what he wants the most, And for his dukedom down in Warwickshire; --By which you see we're all a little jealous....
Poor Greene! I fear the color of his name Was even as that of his ascending soul;And he was one where there are many others, --Some scrivening to the end against their fate, Their puppets all in ink and all to die there;And some with hands that once would shade an eye That scanned Euripides and Aeschylus Will reach by this time for a pot-house mop To slush their first and last of royalties.
Poor devils! and they all play to his hand;For so it was in Athens and old Rome.
But that's not here or there; I've wandered off.
Greene does it, or I'm careful.Where's that boy?
Yes, he'll go back to Stratford.And we'll miss him?
Dear sir, there'll be no London here without him.
We'll all be riding, one of these fine days, Down there to see him -- and his wife won't like us;And then we'll think of what he never said Of women -- which, if taken all in all With what he did say, would buy many horses.
Though nowadays he's not so much for women:
"So few of them," he says, "are worth the guessing."But there's a work at work when he says that, And while he says it one feels in the air A deal of circumambient hocus-pocus.
They've had him dancing till his toes were tender, And he can feel 'em now, come chilly rains.
There's no long cry for going into it, However, and we don't know much about it.
The Fitton thing was worst of all, I fancy;And you in Stratford, like most here in London, Have more now in the `Sonnets' than you paid for;He's put her there with all her poison on, To make a singing fiction of a shadow That's in his life a fact, and always will be.