Poetry: what does this line mean?

[just_a_girl]

In the following poem, I do not understand line 2, "To flourish, to find words, and to attend." I understand the poem is about enthanasia. Can someone please explain it to me? Thank you.

HOW ANNANDALE WENT OUT
"They called it Annandale--and I was there
To flourish, to find words, and to attend:
Liar, physician, hypocrite, and friend,
I watched him; and the sight was not so fair
As one or two that I have seen elsewhere:
An apparatus not for me to mend--
A wreck, with hell between him and the end,
Remained of Annandale; and I was there.

"I knew the ruin as I knew the man;
So put the two together, if you can,
Remembering the worst you know of me.
Now view yourself as I was, on the spot--
With a slight kind of engine. Do you see?
Like this. . . You wouldn't hang me? I thought not."
--Edwin Arlington Robinson
I know that the pronoun "it" refers to the man, the victime. The speaker is a doctor and a friend to this man who is severely injured to the point he cannot be saved and will die painfully. Thus, the speaker also refers to his friend as "a wreck" and "ruin." He is feeling depress that as a physician, he cannot save his life but have to end it because of the pain thus he performs enthuanasia on his friend. He calls him "it" to dehumanize his friend as well as calling him an "apparatus," which is a complex machine. In the last stanza, he is questioning if what he did was really unmoralful. But I don't understand the second line. I'm imagining he is at a funeral but I doubt it.

[Neandrathal]

To flourish may be the flourish of a pen signing an official document such as a death certificate, prescription for a lethal drug, etc. This idea is substantiated by the fact that the narrator is searching for words and attending to the death of the patient. Apparently this narrator is the doctor who has lost his self respect but seems to want to justify his actions. The patient/victim is a friend of the doctor/physician.

[Lace Anne]

Annandale...possibly a town? And she seems to compare it to a man...but I couldn't tell you what the second line means. It's probably something only the author can explain possibly? But to attend to him would be obvious...maybe "to find words" means to find words for him in her poetry writing..otherwise, I can't really help you. That's just my insight.