The speaker, a Spaniard, it must be supposed, describes to his companion the only poet he knew in his life, who roamed along the promenades and through the by-streets and lanes and alleys of Valladolid, an old dog, bald and blindish, at his heels. He appeared interested in whatever he looked on, and his looks went everywhere, taking in the cobbler at his trade, the man slicing lemons into drink, the coffee-roaster’s brazier, and the boys turning its winch; books on stalls, strung-up fly-leaf ballads, posters by the wall;
“‘If any beat a horse, you felt he saw;
If any cursed a woman, he took note.’
Yet stared at nobody,—you stared at him,
And found, less to your pleasure than surprise,
He seemed to know you, and expect as much.”
Popular imagination is active as to who and what he is; perhaps a spy, or it may be “a recording chief-inquisitor, the town’s true master if the town but knew”, who by letters keeps “our Lord the King” well informed “of all thought, said, and acted”; but of the King’s approval of these letters there has been no evidence of any kind.
The speaker found no truth in one of the popular reports, namely, that this strange man lived in great luxury and splendor. On the contrary, he lived in the plainest, simplest manner; played a game of cribbage with his maid, in the evening, and, when the church clock struck ten, went straight off to bed. It seems that while the belief of the people was, that this man kept up a correspondence with their earthly Lord, the King, noting all that went on, the speaker, in the monologue is aware that it was the Heavenly King with whom he corresponded. In the last paragraph of his monologue he expresses the wish that he might have looked in, yet had haply been afraid, when this man came to die, and seen, ministering to him, the heavenly attendants,—
“who line the clean gay garret sides,
And stood about the neat low truckle-bed
With the heavenly manner of relieving guard.
Here had been, mark, the general-in-chief,
Thro’ a whole campaign of the world’s life and death,
Doing the King’s work all the dim day long,
And, now the day was won, relieved at once!”
He then adds that there was
“‘No further show or need of that old coat,
You are sure, for one thing! Bless us, all the while
How sprucely WE are dressed out, you and I!’”
we who are so inferior to that divine poet; but,
“A second, and the angels alter that.”
All books are sourced from Project Gutenberg