'Familiar as an old mistake'

"The Worship of Mammon,'' by Evelyn de Morgan.

"Time was when his half million drew

    The breath of six per cent;

But soon the worm of what-was-not

    Fed hard on his content;

And something crumbled in his brain

    When his half million went.

Time passed, and filled along with his

    The place of many more;

Time came, and hardly one of us

    Had credence to restore,

From what appeared one day, the man

    Whom we had known before.

The broken voice, the withered neck,

    The coat worn out with care,

The cleanliness of indigence,

    The brilliance of despair,

The fond imponderable dreams

    Of affluence —all were there.

Poor Finzer, with his dreams and schemes,

    Fares hard now in the race,

With heart and eye that have a task

    When he looks in the face

Of one who might so easily

    Have been in Finzer's place.

He comes unfailing for the loan

    We give and then forget;

He comes, and probably for years

    Will he be coming yet —

Familiar as an old mistake,

    And futile as regret.''

-- "Bewick Finzer,'' by Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869-1935), Maine's most famous poet and a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize.