Ben Jonson Entertains A Man From Stratford Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis

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You are a friend then as I make it out	A
Of our man Shakespeare who alone of us	B
Will put an ass's head in Fairyland	C
As he would add a shilling to more shillings	D
All most harmonious and out of his	E
Miraculous inviolable increase	F
Fills Ilion Rome or any town you like	G
Of olden time with timeless Englishmen	H
And I must wonder what you think of him	I
All you down there where your small Avon flows	J
By Stratford and where you're an Alderman	H
Some for a guess would have him riding back	K
To be a farrier there or say a dyer	L
Or maybe one of your adept surveyors	M
Or like enough the wizard of all tanners	M
Not you no fear of that for I discern	N
In you a kindling of the flame that saves	M
The nimble element the true phlogiston	N
I see it and was told of it moreover	L
By our discriminate friend himself no other	L
Had you been one of the sad average	O
As he would have it meaning as I take it	P
The sinew and the solvent of our Island	Q
You'd not be buying beer for this Terpander's	M
Approved and estimated friend Ben Jonson	N
He'd never foist it as a part of his	M
Contingent entertainment of a townsman	N
While he goes off rehearsing as he must	R
If he shall ever be the Duke of Stratford	S
And my words are no shadow on your town	N
Far from it for one town's as like another	L
As all are unlike London Oh he knows it	P
And there's the Stratford in him he denies it	P
And there's the Shakespeare in him So God help him	I
I tell him he needs Greek but neither God	T
Nor Greek will help him Nothing will help that man	N
You see the fates have given him so much	U
He must have all or perish or look out	A
Of London where he sees too many lords	M
They're part of half what ails him I suppose	M
There's nothing fouler down among the demons	M
Than what it is he feels when he remembers	M
The dust and sweat and ointment of his calling	V
With his lords looking on and laughing at him	I
King as he is he can't be king de facto	W
And that's as well because he wouldn't like it	P
He'd frame a lower rating of men then	N
Than he has now and after that would come	X
An abdication or an apoplexy	M
He can't be king not even king of Stratford	S
Though half the world if not the whole of it	P
May crown him with a crown that fits no king	V
Save Lord Apollo's homesick emissary	M
Not there on Avon or on any stream	Y
Where Naiads and their white arms are no more	Z
Shall he find home again It's all too bad	A2
But there's a comfort for he'll have that House	M
The best you ever saw and he'll be there	B2
Anon as you're an Alderman Good God	T
He makes me lie awake o' nights and laugh	C2
And you have known him from his origin	N
You tell me and a most uncommon urchin	N
He must have been to the few seeing ones	M
A trifle terrifying I dare say	M
Discovering a world with his man's eyes	M
Quite as another lad might see some finches	M
If he looked hard and had an eye for nature	L
But this one had his eyes and their foretelling	V
And he had you to fare with and what else	M
He must have had a father and a mother	L
In fact I've heard him say so and a dog	D2
As a boy should I venture and the dog	D2
Most likely was the only man who knew him	I
A dog for all I know is what he needs	M
As much as anything right here to day	M
To counsel him about his disillusions	M
Old aches and parturitions of what's coming	V
A dog of orders an emeritus	M
To wag his tail at him when he comes home	E2
And then to put his paws up on his knees	M
And say For God's sake what's it all about	A
	-
I don't know whether he needs a dog or not	F2
Or what he needs I tell him he needs Greek	G2
I'll talk of rules and Aristotle with him	I
And if his tongue's at home he'll say to that	H2
I have your word that Aristotle knows	M
And you mine that I don't know Aristotle	I2
He's all at odds with all the unities	M
And what's yet worse it doesn't seem to matter	L
He treads along through Time's old wilderness	M
As if the tramp of all the centuries	M
Had left no roads and there are none for him	I
He doesn't see them even with those eyes	M
And that's a pity or I say it is	M
Accordingly we have him as we have him	I
Going his way the way that he goes best	J2
A pleasant animal with no great noise	M
Or nonsense anywhere to set him off	K2
Save only divers and inclement devils	M
Have made of late his heart their dwelling place	M
A flame half ready to fly out sometimes	M
At some annoyance may be fanned up in him	I
But soon it falls and when it falls goes out	A
He knows how little room there is in there	B2
For crude and futile animosities	M
And how much for the joy of being whole	L2
And how much for long sorrow and old pain	N
On our side there are some who may be given	N
To grow old wondering what he thinks of us	M
And some above us who are in his eyes	M
Above himself and that's quite right and English	M2
Yet here we smile or disappoint the gods	M
Who made it so the gods have always eyes	M
To see men scratch and they see one down here	N2
Who itches manor bitten to the bone	N
Albeit he knows himself yes yes he knows	M
The lord of more than England and of more	Z
Than all the seas of England in all time	O2
Shall ever wash D'ye wonder that I laugh	C2
He sees me and he doesn't seem to care	B2
And why the devil should he I can't tell you	P2
	-
I'll meet him out alone of a bright Sunday	M
Trim rather spruce and quite the gentleman	N
What ho my lord say I He doesn't hear me	M
Wherefore I have to pause and look at him	I
He's not enormous but one looks at him	I
A little on the round if you insist	Q2
For now God save the mark he's growing old	R2
He's five and forty and to hear him talk	S2
These days you'd call him eighty then you'd add	A2
More years to that He's old enough to be	M
The father of a world and so he is	M
Ben you're a scholar what's the time of day	M
Says he and there shines out of him again	N
An aged light that has no age or station	N
The mystery that's his a mischievous	M
Half mad serenity that laughs at fame	T2
For being won so easy and at friends	M
Who laugh at him for what he wants the most	U2
And for his dukedom down in Warwickshire	B2
By which you see we're all a little jealous	M
Poor Greene I fear the color of his name	T2
Was even as that of his ascending soul	L2
And he was one where there are many others	M
Some scrivening to the end against their fate	V2
Their puppets all in ink and all to die there	B2
And some with hands that once would shade an eye	W2
That scanned Euripides and Aeschylus	M
Will reach by this time for a pot house mop	X2
To slush their first and last of royalties	M
Poor devils and they all play to his hand	C
For so it was in Athens and old Rome	E2
But that's not here or there I've wandered off	K2
Greene does it or I'm careful Where's that boy	Y2
	-
Yes he'll go back to Stratford And we'll miss him	I
Dear sir there'll be no London here without him	I
We'll all be riding one of these fine days	M
Down there to see him and his wife won't like us	M
And then we'll think of what he never said	Z2
Of women which if taken all in all	A3
With what he did say would buy many horses	M
Though nowadays he's not so much for women	N
So few of them he says are worth the guessing	V
But there's a work at work when he says that	H2
And while he says it one feels in the air	B2
A deal of circumambient hocus pocus	M
They've had him dancing till his toes were tender	B2
And he can feel 'em now come chilly rains	M
There's no long cry for going into it	P
However and we don't know much about it	P
The Fitton thing was worst of all I fancy	M
And you in Stratford like most here in London	N
Have more now in the 'Sonnets' than you paid for	B2
He's put her there with all her poison on	N
To make a singing fiction of a shadow	W
That's in his life a fact and always will be	M
But she's no care of ours though Time I fear	B2
Will have a more reverberant ado	P2
About her than about another one	N
Who seems to have decoyed him married him	I
And sent him scuttling on his way to London	N
With much already learned and more to learn	N
And more to follow Lord how I see him now	N
Pretending maybe trying to be like us	M
Whatever he may have meant we never had him	I
He failed us or escaped or what you will	B3
And there was that about him God knows what	C3
We'd flayed another had he tried it on us	M
That made as many of us as had wits	M
More fond of all his easy distances	M
Than one another's noise and clap your shoulder	B2
But think you not my friend he'd never talk	S2
Talk He was eldritch at it and we listened	Q
Thereby acquiring much we knew before	B2
About ourselves and hitherto had held	D3
Irrelevant or not prime to the purpose	M
And there were some of course and there be now	N
Disordered and reduced amazedly	B3
To resignation by the mystic seal	B3
Of young finality the gods had laid	E3
On everything that made him a young demon	N
And one or two shot looks at him already	M
As he had been their executioner	B2
And once or twice he was not knowing it	P
Or knowing being sorry for poor clay	B3
And saying nothing Yet for all his engines	M
You'll meet a thousand of an afternoon	N
Who strut and sun themselves and see around 'em	X
A world made out of more that has a reason	N
Than his I swear that he sees here to day	B3
Though he may scarcely give a Fool an exit	P
But we mark how he sees in everything	V
A law that given we flout it once too often	N
Brings fire and iron down on our naked heads	M
To me it looks as if the power that made him	I
For fear of giving all things to one creature	B2
Left out the first faith innocence illusion	N
Whatever 'tis that keeps us out o' Bedlam	X
And thereby for his too consuming vision	N
Empowered him out of nature though to see him	I
You'd never guess what's going on inside him	I
He'll break out some day like a keg of ale	B3
With too much independent frenzy in it	P
And all for cellaring what he knows won't keep	F3
And what he'd best forget but that he can't	G3
You'll have it and have more than I'm foretelling	V
And there'll be such a roaring at the Globe	H3
As never stunned the bleeding gladiators	M
He'll have to change the color of its hair	B2
A bit for now he calls it Cleopatra	B2
Black hair would never do for Cleopatra	B2
	-
But you and I are not yet two old women	N
And you're a man of office What he does	M
Is more to you than how it is he does it	P
And that's what the Lord God has never told him	I
They work together and the Devil helps 'em	X
They do it of a morning or if not	F2
They do it of a night in which event	I3
He's peevish of a morning He seems old	R2
He's not the proper stomach or the sleep	F3
And they're two sovran agents to conserve him	I
Against the fiery art that has no mercy	M
But what's in that prodigious grand new House	M
I gather something happening in his boyhood	J3
Fulfilled him with a boy's determination	N
To make all Stratford 'ware of him Well well	B3
I hope at last he'll have his joy of it	P
And all his pigs and sheep and bellowing beeves	M
And frogs and owls and unicorns moreover	B2
Be less than hell to his attendant ears	M
Oh past a doubt we'll all go down to see him	I
	-
He may be wise With London two days off	K2
Down there some wind of heaven may yet revive him	I
But there's no quickening breath from anywhere	B2
Shall make of him again the poised young faun	N
From Warwickshire who'd made it seems already	M
A legend of himself before I came	T2
To blink before the last of his first lightning	V
Whatever there be they'll be no more of that	H2
The coming on of his old monster Time	O2
Has made him a still man and he has dreams	M
Were fair to think on once and all found hollow	B3
He knows how much of what men paint themselves	M
Would blister in the light of what they are	B2
He sees how much of what was great now shares	M
An eminence transformed and ordinary	M
He knows too much of what the world has hushed	K3
In others to be loud now for himself	L3
He knows now at what height low enemies	M
May reach his heart and high friends let him fall	B3
But what not even such as he may know	B3
Bedevils him the worst his lark may sing	V
At heaven's gate how he will and for as long	M3
As joy may listen but HE sees no gate	V2
Save one whereat the spent clay waits a little	B3
Before the churchyard has it and the worm	N3
Not long ago late in an afternoon	N
I came on him unseen down Lambeth way	B3
And on my life I was afear'd of him	I
He gloomed and mumbled like a soul from Tophet	V2
His hands behind him and his head bent solemn	N
What is it now said I another woman	N
That made him sorry for me and he smiled	V2
No Ben he mused it's Nothing It's all Nothing	V
We come we go and when we're done we're done	N
Spiders and flies we're mostly one or t'other	B2
We come we go and when we're done we're done	N
By God you sing that song as if you knew it	V2
Said I by way of cheering him what ails ye	M
I think I must have come down here to think	O3
Says he to that and pulls his little beard	V2
Your fly will serve as well as anybody	M
And what's his hour He flies and flies and flies	M
And in his fly's mind has a brave appearance	M
And then your spider gets him in her net	V2
And eats him out and hangs him up to dry	W2
That's Nature the kind mother of us all	B3
And then your slattern housemaid swings her broom	P3
And where's your spider And that's Nature also	B3
It's Nature and it's Nothing It's all Nothing	V
It's all a world where bugs and emperors	M
Go singularly back to the same dust	V2
Each in his time and the old ordered stars	M
That sang together Ben will sing the same	T2
Old stave to morrow	B3
	-
When he talks like that	V2
There's nothing for a human man to do	V2
But lead him to some grateful nook like this	M
Where we be now and there to make him drink	O3
He'll drink for love of me and then be sick	Q3
A sad sign always in a man of parts	M
And always very ominous The great	V2
Should be as large in liquor as in love	R3
And our great friend is not so large in either	B2
One disaffects him and the other fails him	I
Whatso he drinks that has an antic in it	V2
He's wondering what's to pay in his insides	M
And while his eyes are on the Cyprian	N
He's fribbling all the time with that damned House	M
We laugh here at his thrift but after all	B3
It may be thrift that saves him from the devil	B3
God gave it anyhow and we'll suppose	M
He knew the compound of his handiwork	S3
To day the clouds are with him but anon	N
He'll out of 'em enough to shake the tree	M
Of life itself and bring down fruit unheard of	R3
And throwing in the bruised and whole together	B2
Prepare a wine to make us drunk with wonder	B2
And if he live there'll be a sunset spell	B3
Thrown over him as over a glassed lake	T3
That yesterday was all a black wild water	B2
	-
God send he live to give us if no more	B2
What now's a rampage in him and exhibit	V2
With a decent half allegiance to the ages	M
An earnest of at least a casual eye	W2
Turned once on what he owes to Gutenberg	U3
And to the fealty of more centuries	M
Than are as yet a picture in our vision	N
There's time enough I'll do it when I'm old	V2
And we're immortal men he says to that	V2
And then he says to me Ben what's 'immortal'	B3
Think you by any force of ordination	N
It may be nothing of a sort more noisy	M
Than a small oblivion of component ashes	M
That of a dream addicted world was once	M
A moving atomy much like your friend here	B2
Nothing will help that man To make him laugh	C2
I said then he was a mad mountebank	U3
And by the Lord I nearer made him cry	W2
I could have eat an eft then on my knees	M
Tail claws and all of him for I had stung	U3
The king of men who had no sting for me	M
And I had hurt him in his memories	M
And I say now as I shall say again	N
I love the man this side idolatry	M
	-
He'll do it when he's old he says I wonder	B2
He may not be so ancient as all that	V2
For such as he the thing that is to do	V2
Will do itself but there's a reckoning	U3
The sessions that are now too much his own	N
The roiling inward of a stilled outside	V2
The churning out of all those blood fed lines	M
The nights of many schemes and little sleep	F3
The full brain hammered hot with too much thinking	U3
The vexed heart over worn with too much aching	U3
This weary jangling of conjoined affairs	M
Made out of elements that have no end	V2
And all confused at once I understand	V2
Is not what makes a man to live forever	B2
O no not now He'll not be going now	N
There'll be time yet for God knows what explosions	M
Before he goes He'll stay awhile Just wait	V2
Just wait a year or two for Cleopatra	B2
For she's to be a balsam and a comfort	V2
And that's not all a jape of mine now either	B2
For granted once the old way of Apollo	B3
Sings in a man he may then if he's able	B3
Strike unafraid whatever strings he will	B3
Upon the last and wildest of new lyres	M
Nor out of his new magic though it hymn	N
The shrieks of dungeoned hell shall he create	V2
A madness or a gloom to shut quite out	V2
A cleaving daylight and a last great calm	V3
Triumphant over shipwreck and all storms	M
He might have given Aristotle creeps	M
But surely would have given him his 'katharsis'	M
	-
He'll not be going yet There's too much yet	V2
Unsung within the man But when he goes	M
I'd stake ye coin o' the realm his only care	B2
For a phantom world he sounded and found wanting	U3
Will be a portion here a portion there	B2
Of this or that thing or some other thing	U3
That has a patent and intrinsical	B3
Equivalence in those egregious shillings	M
And yet he knows God help him Tell me now	N
If ever there was anything let loose	M
On earth by gods or devils heretofore	B2
Like this mad careful proud indifferent Shakespeare	B2
Where was it if it ever was By heaven	N
'Twas never yet in Rhodes or Pergamon	N
In Thebes or Nineveh a thing like this	M
No thing like this was ever out of England	V2
And that he knows I wonder if he cares	M
Perhaps he does O Lord that House in Stratford	V2

Edwin Arlington Robinson

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