We are no chafferers, my daughter and I. We give what pleases us and when we choose, And, having given, we do not take back. But once we shut our fists upon a star It will take portents to unloose that grip And even then the stuff will keep the print. It is a habit of living. For the boy I do not know but will not stand between. He has more toughness in him than he thinks. —I took my wife out of a pretty house. —I took my wife out of a pleasant place. —I stripped my wife of comfortable things. —I drove my wife to wander with the wind. —And we are old now, Faustus. Let it be so. There was one man who might have understood, Because he was half-oriole and half-fox, Not Emerson, but the man by Walden Pond. But he was given to the birds in youth And never had a woman or a daughter.