Do you remember
That afternoon-that Sunday afternoon!-
When, as the kirks were ringing in,
And the grey city teemed
With Sabbath feelings and aspects,
Lewis-our Lewis then,
Now the whole world's-and you,
Young, yet in shape most like an elder, came,
Laden with Balzacs
(Big, yellow books, quite impudently French),
The first of many times
To that transformed back-kitchen where I lay
So long, so many centuries-
Or years is it!-ago?

Dear Charles, since then
We have been friends, Lewis and you and I,
(How good it sounds, 'Lewis and you and I!'):
Such friends, I like to think,
That in us three, Lewis and me and you,
Is something of that gallant dream
Which old Dumas-the generous, the humane,
The seven-and-seventy times to be forgiven!-
Dreamed for a blessing to the race,
The immortal Musketeers.

Our Athos rests-the wise, the kind,
The liberal and august, his fault atoned,
Rests in the crowded yard
There at the west of Princes Street. We three-
You, I, and Lewis!-still afoot,
Are still together, and our lives,
In chime so long, may keep
(God bless the thought!)
Unjangled till the end.