'Welcome home!'

Downtown Gardiner, Maine, in 1914. Edwin Arlington Robinson spent his early years in the town, which may have been a model for "Tilbury Town.''

"Old Eben Flood, climbing alone one night 

Over the hill between the town below 

And the forsaken upland hermitage 

That held as much as he should ever know 

On earth again of home, paused warily. 

The road was his with not a native near; 

And Eben, having leisure, said aloud, 

For no man else in Tilbury Town to hear: 

'Well, Mr. Flood, we have the harvest moon 

Again, and we may not have many more; 

The bird is on the wing, the poet says, 

And you and I have said it here before. 

Drink to the bird.' He raised up to the light 

The jug that he had gone so far to fill, 

And answered huskily: 'Well, Mr. Flood, 

Since you propose it, I believe I will.'

Alone, as if enduring to the end 

A valiant armor of scarred hopes outworn, 

He stood there in the middle of the road 

Like Roland's ghost winding a silent horn. 

Below him, in the town among the trees, 

Where friends of other days had honored him, 

A phantom salutation of the dead 

Rang thinly till old Eben's eyes were dim. 

Then, as a mother lays her sleeping child 

Down tenderly, fearing it may awake, 

He set the jug down slowly at his feet 

With trembling care, knowing that most things break; 

And only when assured that on firm earth 

It stood, as the uncertain lives of men 

Assuredly did not, he paced away, 

And with his hand extended paused again: 

'Well, Mr. Flood, we have not met like this 

In a long time; and many a change has come 

To both of us, I fear, since last it was 

We had a drop together. Welcome home!' 

Convivially returning with himself, 

Again he raised the jug up to the light; 

And with an acquiescent quaver said: 

'Well, Mr. Flood, if you insist, I might. 

'Only a very little, Mr. Flood— 

For auld lang syne. No more, sir; that will do.'

So, for the time, apparently it did, 

And Eben evidently thought so too; 

For soon amid the silver loneliness 

Of night he lifted up his voice and sang, 

Secure, with only two moons listening, 

Until the whole harmonious landscape rang— 

'For auld lang syne.' The weary throat gave out, 

The last word wavered; and the song being done, 

He raised again the jug regretfully 

And shook his head, and was again alone. 

There was not much that was ahead of him, 

And there was nothing in the town below— 

Where strangers would have shut the many doors 

That many friends had opened long ago.''

-- "Mr. Flood's Party,'' by Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869-1935)