Explore "Shadrach o'Leary" by Edwin Arlington Robinson on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
O'LEARY was a poet - for a while:
He sang of many ladies frail and fair, / The rolling glory of their golden hair, / And emperors extinguished with a smile.
They foiled his years with many an ancient wile,
And if they limped, O'Leary didn't care:
He turned them loose and had them everywhere, / Undoing saints and senates with their guile.
But this was not the end. A year ago
I met him - and to meet was to admire:
Forgotten were the ladies and the lyre, / And the small, ink-fed Eros of his dream.
By questioning I found a man to know -
A failure spared, a Shadrach of the Gleam.