I--The Lure

No, no,--forget your Cricket and your Ant, For I shall never set my name to theirs That now bespeak the very sons and heirs Incarnate of Queen Gossip and King Cant. The case of Leffingwell is mixed, I grant, And futile seems the burden that he bears; But are we sounding his forlorn affairs Who brand him parasite and sycophant? I tell you, Leffingwell was more than these; And if he prove a rather sorry knight, What quiverings in the distance of what light May not have lured him with high promises, And then gone down?--He may have been deceived; He may have lied,--he did; and he believed.