Classic Poem

He was the finest of our happy men;
He had all joys, he never thought of death;
He fiddled sometimes with his mind, and then
Shook off the tremor like a nervous wren—
Just once or twice I saw him catch his breath.

Or in the shimmering clatter of the streets,
Or shaking hands, or tying his cravat,
He was the quick intelligent fool one meets
Without an afterthought of charnel sheets:
He never looked at things as This or That.

I saw him once again. It was too late;
His pretty wife was sad; I didn't know
For I was out of town and it was fate
That the indifferent message of that date
Should be a death, the embarrassing dumb show.

There at the church they took him through the door,
His sweet wide mouth much as it was before,
And some said, bitterly bitterly wept his whore.