II. The Children of the Night   
44. The Torrent   
     
I FOUND a torrent falling in a glen      
Where the sun’s light shone silvered and leaf-split;      
The boom, the foam, and the mad flash of it      
All made a magic symphony; but when      
I thought upon the coming of hard men           5   
To cut those patriarchal trees away,      
And turn to gold the silver of that spray,      
I shuddered. Yet a gladness now and then      
Did wake me to myself till I was glad      
In earnest, and was welcoming the time          10   
For screaming saws to sound above the chime      
Of idle waters, and for me to know      
The jealous visionings that I had had      
Were steps to the great place where trees and torrents go

II. The Children of the Night   
45. L’envoy   
     
NOW in a thought, now in a shadowed word,      
Now in a voice that thrills eternity,      
Ever there comes an onward phrase to me      
Of some transcendent music I have heard;      
No piteous thing by soft hands dulcimered,           5   
No trumpet crash of blood-sick victory,      
But a glad strain of some vast harmony      
That no brief mortal touch has ever stirred.      
There is no music in the world like this,      
No character wherewith to set it down,          10   
No kind of instrument to make it sing.      
No kind of instrument? Ah, yes, there is;      
And after time and place are overthrown,      
God’s touch will keep its one chord quivering

III. Captain Craig, Etc.   
1. Captain Craig   
     
I

I DOUBT if ten men in all Tilbury Town      
Had ever shaken hands with Captain Craig,      
Or called him by his name, or looked at him      
So curiously, or so concernedly,      
As they had looked at ashes; but a few—           5   
Say five or six of us—had found somehow      
The spark in him, and we had fanned it there,      
Choked under, like a jest in Holy Writ,      
By Tilbury prudence. He had lived his life      
And in his way had shared, with all mankind,          10   
Inveterate leave to fashion of himself,      
By some resplendent metamorphosis,      
Whatever he was not. And after time,      
When it had come sufficiently to pass      
That he was going patch-clad through the streets,          15   
Weak, dizzy, chilled, and half starved, he had laid      
Some nerveless fingers on a prudent sleeve,      
And told the sleeve, in furtive confidence,      
Just how it was: “My name is Captain Craig,”      
He said, “and I must eat.” The sleeve moved on,          20   
And after it moved others—one or two;      
For Captain Craig, before the day was done,      
Got back to the scant refuge of his bed      
And shivered into it without a curse—      
Without a murmur even. He was cold,          25   
And old, and hungry; but the worst of it      
Was a forlorn familiar consciousness      
That he had failed again. There was a time      
When he had fancied, if worst came to worst,      
And he could do no more, that he might ask          30   
Of whom he would. But once had been enough,      
And soon there would be nothing more to ask.      
He was himself, and he had lost the speed      
He started with, and he was left behind.      
There was no mystery, no tragedy;          35   
And if they found him lying on his back      
Stone dead there some sharp morning, as they might,—      
Well, once upon a time there was a man—      
Es war einmal ein König, if it pleased him.      
And he was right: there were no men to blame:          40   
There was just a false note in the Tilbury tune—      
A note that able-bodied men might sound      
Hosannas on while Captain Craig lay quiet.      
They might have made him sing by feeding him      
Till he should march again, but probably          45   
Such yielding would have jeopardized the rhythm;      
They found it more melodious to shout      
Right on, with unmolested adoration,      
To keep the tune as it had always been,      
To trust in God, and let the Captain starve.          50   
   
He must have understood that afterwards—      
When we had laid some fuel to the spark      
Of him, and oxidized it—for he laughed      
Out loud and long at us to feel it burn,      
And then, for gratitude, made game of us:          55   
“You are the resurrection and the life,”      
He said, “and I the hymn the Brahmin sings;      
O Fuscus! and we’ll go no more a-roving.”      
We were not quite accoutred for a blast      
Of any lettered nonchalance like that,          60   
And some of us—the five or six of us      
Who found him out—were singularly struck.      
But soon there came assurance of his lips,      
Like phrases out of some sweet instrument      
Man’s hand had never fitted, that he felt          65   
“No penitential shame for what had come,      
No virtuous regret for what had been,—      
But rather a joy to find it in his life      
To be an outcast usher of the soul      
For such as had good courage of the Sun          70   
To pattern Love.” The Captain had one chair;      
And on the bottom of it, like a king,      
For longer time than I dare chronicle,      
Sat with an ancient ease and eulogized      
His opportunity. My friends got out,          75   
Like brokers out of Arcady; but I—      
May be for fascination of the thing,      
Or may be for the larger humor of it—      
Stayed listening, unwearied and unstung.      
When they were gone the Captain’s tuneful ooze          80   
Of rhetoric took on a change; he smiled      
At me and then continued, earnestly:      
“Your friends have had enough of it; but you,      
For a motive hardly vindicated yet      
By prudence or by conscience, have remained;          85   
And that is very good, for I have things      
To tell you: things that are not words alone—      
Which are the ghosts of things—but something firmer.      
“First, would I have you know, for every gift      
Or sacrifice, there are—or there may be—          90   
Two kinds of gratitude: the sudden kind      
We feel for what we take, the larger kind      
We feel for what we give. Once we have learned      
As much as this, we know the truth has been      
Told over to the world a thousand times;—          95   
But we have had no ears to listen yet      
For more than fragments of it: we have heard      
A murmur now and then, and echo here      
And there, and we have made great music of it;      
And we have made innumerable books         100   
To please the Unknown God. Time throws away      
Dead thousands of them, but the God that knows      
No death denies not one: the books all count,      
The songs all count; and yet God’s music has      
No modes, his language has no adjectives.”         105   
   
“You may be right, you may be wrong,” said I;      
“But what has this that you are saying now—      
This nineteenth-century Nirvana-talk—      
To do with you and me?” The Captain raised      
His hand and held it westward, where a patched         110   
And unwashed attic-window filtered in      
What barren light could reach us, and then said,      
With a suave, complacent resonance: “There shines      
The sun. Behold it. We go round and round,      
And wisdom comes to us with every whirl         115   
We count throughout the circuit. We may say      
The child is born, the boy becomes a man,      
The man does this and that, and the man goes,—      
But having said it we have not said much,      
Not very much. Do I fancy, or you think,         120   
That it will be the end of anything      
When I am gone? There was a soldier once      
Who fought one fight and in that fight fell dead.      
Sad friends went after, and they brought him home      
And had a brass band at his funeral,         125   
As you should have at mine; and after that      
A few remembered him. But he was dead,      
They said, and they should have their friend no more.—      
However, there was once a starveling child—      
A ragged-vested little incubus,         130   
Born to be cuffed and frighted out of all      
Capacity for childhood’s happiness—      
Who started out one day, quite suddenly,      
To drown himself. He ran away from home,      
Across the clover-fields and through the woods,         135   
And waited on a rock above a stream,      
Just like a kingfisher. He might have dived,      
Or jumped, or he might not; but anyhow,      
There came along a man who looked at him      
With such an unexpected friendliness,         140   
And talked with him in such a common way,      
That life grew marvelously different:      
What he had lately known for sullen trunks      
And branches, and a world of tedious leaves,      
Was all transmuted; a faint forest wind         145   
That once had made the loneliest of all      
Sad sounds on earth, made now the rarest music;      
And water that had called him once to death      
Now seemed a flowing glory. And that man,      
Born to go down a soldier, did this thing.         150   
Not much to do? Not very much, I grant you:      
Good occupation for a sonneteer,      
Or for a clown, or for a clergyman,      
But small work for a soldier. By the way,      
When you are weary sometimes of your own         155   
Utility, I wonder if you find      
Occasional great comfort pondering      
What power a man has in him to put forth?      
‘Of all the many marvelous things that are,      
Nothing is there more marvelous than man,’         160   
Said Sophocles; and he lived long ago;      
‘And earth, unending ancient of the gods      
He furrows; and the ploughs go back and forth,      
Turning the broken mould, year after year.’…      
   
“I turned a little furrow of my own         165   
Once on a time, and everybody laughed—      
As I laughed afterwards; and I doubt not      
The First Intelligence, which we have drawn      
In our competitive humility      
As if it went forever on two legs,         170   
Had some diversion of it: I believe      
God’s humor is the music of the spheres—      
But even as we draft omnipotence      
Itself to our own image, we pervert      
The courage of an infinite ideal         175   
To finite resignation. You have made      
The cement of your churches out of tears      
And ashes, and the fabric will not stand:      
The shifted walls that you have coaxed and shored      
So long with unavailing compromise         180   
Will crumble down to dust and blow away,      
And younger dust will follow after them;      
Though not the faintest or the farthest whirled      
First atom of the least that ever flew      
Shall be by man defrauded of the touch         185   
God thrilled it with to make a dream for man      
When Science was unborn. And after time,      
When we have earned our spiritual ears,      
And art’s commiseration of the truth      
No longer glorifies the singing beast,         190   
Or venerates the clinquant charlatan,—      
Then shall at last come ringing through the sun,      
Through time, through flesh, a music that is true.      
For wisdom is that music, and all joy      
That wisdom:—you may counterfeit, you think,         195   
The burden of it in a thousand ways;      
But as the bitterness that loads your tears      
Makes Dead Sea swimming easy, so the gloom,      
The penance, and the woeful pride you keep,      
Make bitterness your buoyance of the world.         200   
And at the fairest and the frenziedest      
Alike of your God-fearing festivals,      
You so compound the truth to pamper fear      
That in the doubtful surfeit of your faith      
You clamor for the food that shadows eat.         205   
You call it rapture or deliverance,—      
Passion or exaltation, or what most      
The moment needs, but your faint-heartedness      
Lives in it yet: you quiver and you clutch      
For something larger, something unfulfilled,         210   
Some wiser kind of joy that you shall have      
Never, until you learn to laugh with God.”      
And with a calm Socratic patronage,      
At once half sombre and half humorous,      
The Captain reverently twirled his thumbs         215   
And fixed his eyes on something far away;      
Then, with a gradual gaze, conclusive, shrewd,      
And at the moment unendurable      
For sheer beneficence, he looked at me.      
   
“But the brass band?” I said, not quite at ease         220   
With altruism yet.—He made a sort      
Of reminiscent little inward noise,      
Midway between a chuckle and a laugh,      
And that was all his answer: not a word      
Of explanation or suggestion came         225   
From those tight-smiling lips. And when I left,      
I wondered, as I trod the creaking snow      
And had the world-wide air to breathe again,—      
Though I had seen the tremor of his mouth      
And honored the endurance of his hand—         230   
Whether or not, securely closeted      
Up there in the stived haven of his den,      
The man sat laughing at me; and I felt      
My teeth grind hard together with a quaint      
Revulsion—as I recognize it now—         235   
Not only for my Captain, but as well      
For every smug-faced failure on God’s earth;      
Albeit I could swear, at the same time,      
That there were tears in the old fellow’s eyes.      
I question if in tremors or in tears         240   
There be more guidance to man’s worthiness      
Than—well, say in his prayers. But oftentimes      
It humors us to think that we possess      
By some divine adjustment of our own      
Particular shrewd cells, or something else,         245   
What others, for untutored sympathy,      
Go spirit-fishing more than half their lives      
To catch—like cheerful sinners to catch faith;      
And I have not a doubt but I assumed      
Some egotistic attribute like this         250   
When, cautiously, next morning I reduced      
The fretful qualms of my novitiate,      
For most part, to an undigested pride.      
Only, I live convinced that I regret      
This enterprise no more than I regret         255   
My life; and I am glad that I was born.      
   
That evening, at “The Chrysalis,” I found      
The faces of my comrades all suffused      
With what I chose then to denominate      
Superfluous good feeling. In return,         260   
They loaded me with titles of odd form      
And unexemplified significance,      
Like “Bellows-mender to Prince Æolus,”      
“Pipe-filler to the Hoboscholiast,”      
“Bread-fruit for the Non-Doing,” with one more         265   
That I remember, and a dozen more      
That I forget. I may have been disturbed,      
I do not say that I was not annoyed,      
But something of the same serenity      
That fortified me later made me feel         270   
For their skin-pricking arrows not so much      
Of pain as of a vigorous defect      
In this world’s archery. I might have tried,      
With a flat facetiousness, to demonstrate      
What they had only snapped at and thereby         275   
Made out of my best evidence no more      
Than comfortable food for their conceit;      
But patient wisdom frowned on argument,      
With a side nod for silence, and I smoked      
A series of incurable dry pipes         280   
While Morgan fiddled, with obnoxious care,      
Things that I wished he wouldn’t. Killigrew,      
Drowsed with a fond abstraction, like an ass,      
Lay blinking at me while he grinned and made      
Remarks. The learned Plunket made remarks.         285   
   
It may have been for smoke that I cursed cats      
That night, but I have rather to believe      
As I lay turning, twisting, listening,      
And wondering, between great sleepless yawns,      
What possible satisfaction those dead leaves         290   
Could find in sending shadows to my room      
And swinging them like black rags on a line,      
That I, with a forlorn clear-headedness      
Was ekeing out probation. I had sinned      
In fearing to believe what I believed,         295   
And I was paying for it.—Whimsical,      
You think,—factitious; but “there is no luck,      
No fate, no fortune for us, but the old      
Unswerving and inviolable price      
Gets paid: God sells himself eternally,         300   
But never gives a crust,” my friend had said;      
And while I watched those leaves, and heard those cats,      
And with half mad minuteness analyzed      
The Captain’s attitude and then my own,      
I felt at length as one who throws himself         305   
Down restless on a couch when clouds are dark,      
And shuts his eyes to find, when he wakes up      
And opens them again, what seems at first      
An unfamiliar sunlight in his room      
And in his life—as if the child in him         310   
Had laughed and let him see; and then I knew      
Some prowling superfluity of child      
In me had found the child in Captain Craig      
And let the sunlight reach him. While I slept,      
My thought reshaped itself to friendly dreams,         315   
And in the morning it was with me still.      
   
Through March and shifting April to the time      
When winter first becomes a memory      
My friend the Captain—to my other friend’s      
Incredulous regret that such as he         320   
Should ever get the talons of his talk      
So fixed in my unfledged credulity—      
Kept up the peroration of his life,      
Not yielding at a threshold, nor, I think,      
Too often on the stairs. He made me laugh         325   
Sometimes, and then again he made me weep      
Almost; for I had insufficiency      
Enough in me to make me know the truth      
Within the jest, and I could feel it there      
As well as if it were the folded note         330   
I felt between my fingers. I had said      
Before that I should have to go away      
And leave him for the season; and his eyes      
Had shone with well-becoming interest      
At that intelligence. There was no mist         335   
In them that I remember; but I marked      
An unmistakable self-questioning      
And a reticence of unassumed regret.      
The two together made anxiety—      
Not selfishness, I ventured. I should see         340   
No more of him for six or seven months,      
And I was there to tell him as I might      
What humorous provision we had made      
For keeping him locked up in Tilbury Town.      
That finished—with a few more commonplace         345   
Prosaics on the certified event      
Of my return to find him young again—      
I left him neither vexed, I thought, with us,      
Nor over much at odds with destiny.      
At any rate, save always for a look         350   
That I had seen too often to mistake      
Or to forget, he gave no other sign.      
   
That train began to move; and as it moved,      
I felt a comfortable sudden change      
All over and inside. Partly it seemed         355   
As if the strings of me had all at once      
Gone down a tone or two; and even though      
It made me scowl to think so trivial      
A touch had owned the strength to tighten them,      
It made me laugh to think that I was free.         360   
But free from what—when I began to turn      
The question round—was more than I could say:      
I was no longer vexed with Killigrew,      
Nor more was I possessed with Captain Craig;      
But I was eased of some restraint, I thought,         365   
Not qualified by those amenities,      
And I should have to search the matter down;      
For I was young, and I was very keen.      
So I began to smoke a bad cigar      
That Plunket, in his love, had given me         370   
The night before; and as I smoked I watched      
The flying mirrors for a mile or so,      
Till to the changing glimpse, now sharp, now faint,      
They gave me of the woodland over west,      
A gleam of long-forgotten strenuous years         375   
Came back, when we were Red Men on the trail,      
With Morgan for the big chief Wocky-Bocky;      
And yawning out of that I set myself      
To face again the loud monotonous ride      
That lay before me like a vista drawn         380   
Of bag-racks to the fabled end of things.

III. Captain Craig, Etc.   
1. Captain Craig: II   
     
II

YET that ride had an end, as all rides have;      
And the days coming after took the road      
That all days take,—though never one of them      
Went by but I got some good thought of it         385   
For Captain Craig. Not that I pitied him,      
Or nursed a mordant hunger for his presence;      
But what I thought (what Killigrew still thinks)      
An irremediable cheerfulness      
Was in him and about the name of him,         390   
And I fancy that it may be most of all      
For cheer in them that I have saved his letters.      
I like to think of him, and how he looked—      
Or should have looked—in his renewed estate,      
Composing them. They may be dreariness         395   
Unspeakable to you that never saw      
The Captain; but to five or six of us      
Who knew him they are not so bad as that.      
It may be we have smiled not always where      
The text itself would seem to indicate         400   
Responsive titillation on our part,—      
Yet having smiled at all we have done well,      
Knowing that we have touched the ghost of him.      
He tells me that he thinks of nothing now      
That he would rather do than be himself,         405   
Wisely alive. So let us heed this man:—      
   
“The world that has been old is young again,      
The touch that faltered clings; and this is May.      
So think of your decrepit pensioner      
As one who cherishes the living light,         410   
Forgetful of dead shadows. He may gloat,      
And he may not have power in his arms      
To make the young world move; but he has eyes      
And ears, and he can read the sun. Therefore      
Think first of him as one who vegetates         415   
In tune with all the children who laugh best      
And longest through the sunshine, though far off      
Their laughter, and unheard; for ’t is the child,      
O friend, that with his laugh redeems the man.      
Time steals the infant, but the child he leaves;         420   
And we, we fighters over of old wars—      
We men, we shearers of the Golden Fleece—      
Were brutes without him,—brutes to tear the scars      
Of one another’s wounds and weep in them,      
And then cry out on God that he should flaunt         425   
For life such anguish and flesh-wretchedness.      
But let the brute go roaring his own way:      
We do not need him, and he loves us not.      
   
“I cannot think of anything to-day      
That I would rather do than be myself,         430   
Primevally alive, and have the sun      
Shine into me; for on a day like this,      
When chaff-parts of a man’s adversities      
Are blown by quick spring breezes out of him—      
When even a flicker of wind that wakes no more         435   
Than a tuft of grass, or a few young yellow leaves,      
Comes like the falling of a prophet’s breath      
On altar-flames rekindled of crushed embers,—      
Then do I feel, now do I feel, within me      
No dreariness, no grief, no discontent,         440   
No twinge of human envy. But I beg      
That you forego credentials of the past      
For these illuminations of the present,      
Or better still, to give the shadow justice,      
You let me tell you something: I have yearned         445   
In many another season for these days,      
And having them with God’s own pageantry      
To make me glad for them,—yes, I have cursed      
The sunlight and the breezes and the leaves      
To think of men on stretchers or on beds,         450   
Or on foul floors, things without shapes or names,      
Made human with paralysis and rags;      
Or some poor devil on a battle-field,      
Left undiscovered and without the strength      
To drag a maggot from his clotted mouth;         455   
Or women working where a man would fall—      
Flat-breasted miracles of cheerfulness      
Made neuter by the work that no man counts      
Until it waits undone; children thrown out      
To feed their veins and souls on offal … Yes,         460   
I have had half a mind to blow my brains out      
Sometimes; and I have gone from door to door,      
Ragged myself, trying to do something—      
Crazy, I hope.—But what has this to do      
With Spring? Because one half of humankind         465   
Lives here in hell, shall not the other half      
Do any more than just for conscience’ sake      
Be miserable? Is this the way for us      
To lead these creatures up to find the light,—      
Or to be drawn down surely to the dark         470   
Again? Which is it? What does the child say?      
   
“But let us not make riot for the child      
Untaught, nor let us hold that we may read      
The sun but through the shadows; nor, again,      
Be we forgetful ever that we keep         475   
The shadows on their side. For evidence,      
I might go back a little to the days      
When I had hounds and credit, and grave friends      
To borrow my books and set wet glasses on them,      
And other friends of all sorts, grave and gay,         480   
Of whom one woman and one man stand out      
From all the rest, this morning. The man said      
One day, as we were riding, ‘Now, you see,      
There goes a woman cursed with happiness:      
Beauty and wealth, health, horses,—everything         485   
That she could ask, or we could ask, is hers,      
Except an inward eye for the dim fact      
Of what this dark world is. The cleverness      
God gave her—or the devil—cautions her      
That she must keep the china cup of life         490   
Filled somehow, and she fills it—runs it over—      
Claps her white hands while some one does the sopping      
With fingers made, she thinks, for just that purpose,      
Giggles and eats and reads and goes to church,      
Makes pretty little penitential prayers,         495   
And has an eighteen-carat crucifix      
Wrapped up in chamois-skin. She gives enough,      
You say; but what is giving like hers worth?      
What is a gift without the soul to guide it?      
“Poor dears, and they have cancers?—Oh!” she says;         500   
And away she works at that new altar-cloth      
For the Reverend Hieronymus Mackintosh—      
Third person, Jerry. “Jerry,” she says, “can say      
Such lovely things, and make life seem so sweet!”      
Jerry can drink, also.—And there she goes,         505   
Like a whirlwind through an orchard in the springtime—      
Throwing herself away as if she thought      
The world and the whole planetary circus      
Were a flourish of apple-blossoms. Look at her!      
And here is this infernal world of ours—         510   
And hers, if only she might find it out—      
Starving and shrieking, sickening, suppurating,      
Whirling to God knows where … But look at her!’      
   
“And after that it came about somehow,      
Almost as if the Fates were killing time,         515   
That she, the spendthrift of a thousand joys,      
Rode in her turn with me, and in her turn      
Made observations: ‘Now there goes a man,’      
She said, ‘who feeds his very soul on poison:      
No matter what he does, or where he looks,         520   
He finds unhappiness; or, if he fails      
To find it, he creates it, and then hugs it:      
Pygmalion again for all the world—      
Pygmalion gone wrong. You know I think      
If when that precious animal was young,         525   
His mother, or some watchful aunt of his,      
Had spanked him with Pendennis and Don Juan,      
And given him the Lady of the Lake,      
Or Cord and Creese, or almost anything,      
There might have been a tonic for him? Listen:         530   
When he was possibly nineteen years old      
He came to me and said, “I understand      
You are in love”—yes, that is what he said,—      
“But never mind, it won’t last very long;      
It never does; we all get over it.         535   
We have this clinging nature, for you see      
The Great Bear shook himself once on a time      
And the world is one of many that let go.”      
And yet the creature lives, and there you see him.      
And he would have this life no fairer thing         540   
Than a certain time for numerous marionettes      
To do the Dance of Death. Give him a rose,      
And he will tell you it is very sweet,      
But only for a day. Most wonderful!      
Show him a child, or anything that laughs,         545   
And he begins at once to crunch his wormwood      
And then runs on with his “realities.”      
What does he know about realities,      
Who sees the truth of things almost as well      
As Nero saw the Northern Lights? Good gracious!         550   
Can’t you do something with him? Call him something—      
Call him a type, and that will make him cry:      
One of those not at all unusual,      
Prophetic, would-be-Delphic manger-snappers      
That always get replaced when they are gone;         555   
Or one of those impenetrable men,      
Who seem to carry branded on their foreheads,      
“We are abstruse, but not quite so abstruse      
As possibly the good Lord may have wished;”      
One of those men who never quite confess         560   
That Washington was great;—the kind of man      
That everybody knows and always will,—      
Shrewd, critical, facetious, insincere,      
And for the most part harmless, I’m afraid.      
But even then, you might be doing well         565   
To tell him something.’—And I said I would.      
“So in one afternoon you see we have      
The child in absence—or, to say the least,      
In ominous defect,—and in excess      
Commensurate, likewise. Now the question is,         570   
Not which was right and which was wrong, for each,      
By virtue of one-sidedness, was both;      
But rather—to my mind, as heretofore—      
Is it better to be blinded by the lights,      
Or by the shadows? By the lights, you say?         575   
The shadows are all devils, and the lights      
Gleam guiding and eternal? Very good;      
But while you say so do not quite forget      
That sunshine has a devil of its own,      
And one that we, for the great craft of him,         580   
But vaguely recognize. The marvel is      
That this persuasive and especial devil,      
By grace of his extreme transparency,      
Precludes all common vision of him; yet      
There is one way to glimpse him and a way,         585   
As I believe, to test him,—granted once      
That we have ousted prejudice, which means      
That we have made magnanimous advance      
Through self-acquaintance. Not an easy thing      
For some of us; impossible, may be,         590   
For most of us: the woman and the man      
I cited, for example, would have wrought      
The most intractable conglomerate      
Of everything, if they had set themselves      
To analyze themselves and not each other;         595   
If only for the sake of self-respect,      
They would have come to no place but the same      
Wherefrom they started; one would have lived awhile      
In paradise without defending it,      
And one in hell without enjoying it;         600   
And each had been dissuaded neither more      
Nor less thereafter. There are such on earth      
As might have been composed primarily      
For mortal warning: he was one of them,      
And she—the devil makes us hesitate.         605   
’T is easy to read words writ well with ink      
That makes a good black mark on smooth white paper;      
But words are done sometimes with other ink      
Whereof the smooth white paper gives no sign      
Till science brings it out; and here we come         610   
To knowledge, and the way to test a devil.      
   
“To most of us, you say, and you say well,      
This demon of the sunlight is a stranger;      
But if you break the sunlight of yourself,      
Project it, and observe the quaint shades of it,         615   
I have a shrewd suspicion you may find      
That even as a name lives unrevealed      
In ink that waits an agent, so it is      
The devil—or this devil—hides himself      
To all the diagnoses we have made         620   
Save one. The quest of him is hard enough—      
As hard as truth; but once we seem to know      
That his compound obsequiousness prevails      
Unferreted within us, we may find      
That sympathy, which aureoles itself         625   
To superfluity from you and me,      
May stand against the soul for five or six      
Persistent and indubitable streaks      
Of irritating brilliance, out of which      
A man may read, if he have knowledge in him,         630   
Proportionate attest of ignorance,      
Hypocrisy, good-heartedness, conceit,      
Indifference,—by which a man may learn      
That even courage may not make him glad      
For laughter when that laughter is itself         635   
The tribute of recriminating groans.      
Nor are the shapes of obsolescent creeds      
Much longer to flit near enough to make      
Men glad for living in a world like this;      
For wisdom, courage, knowledge, and the faith         640   
Which has the soul and is the soul of reason—      
These are the world’s achievers. And the child—      
The child that is the saviour of all ages,      
The prophet and the poet, the crown-bearer,      
Must yet with Love’s unhonored fortitude,         645   
Survive to cherish and attain for us      
The candor and the generosity,      
By leave of which we smile if we bring back      
The first revealing flash that wakened us      
When wisdom like a shaft of dungeon-light         650   
Came searching down to find us.      
   
        “Halfway back      
I made a mild allusion to the Fates,      
Not knowing then that ever I should have      
Dream-visions of them, painted on the air,—         655   
Clotho, Lachesis, Atropos. Faint-hued      
They seem, but with a faintness never fading,      
Unblurred by gloom, unshattered by the sun,      
Still with eternal color, colorless,      
They move and they remain. The while I write         660   
These very words I see them,—Atropos,      
Lachesis, Clotho; and the last is laughing.      
When Clotho laughs, Atropos rattles her shears;      
But Clotho keeps on laughing just the same.      
Some time when I have dreamed that Atropos         665   
Has laughed, I’ll tell you how the colors change—      
The colors that are changeless, colorless.”      
I fear I may have answered Captain Craig’s      
Epistle Number One with what he chose,      
Good-humoredly but anxiously, to take         670   
For something that was not all reverence;      
From Number Two it would have seemed almost      
As if the flanges of the old man’s faith      
Had slipped the treacherous rails of my allegiance,      
Leaving him by the roadside, humorously         675   
Upset, with nothing more convivial      
To do than be facetious and austere:—      
   
“If you decry Don César de Bazan,      
There is an imperfection in your vitals.      
Flamboyant and old-fashioned? Overdone?         680   
Romantico-robustious?—Dear young man,      
There are fifteen thousand ways to be one-sided,      
And I have indicated two of them      
Already. Now you bait me with a third—      
As if it were a spider with nine legs;         685   
But what it is that you would have me do,      
What fatherly wrath you most anticipate,      
I lack the needed impulse to discern;      
Though I who shape no songs of any sort,      
I who have made no music, thrilled no canvas,—         690   
I who have added nothing to the world      
The world would reckon save long-squandered wit—      
Might with half-pardonable reverence      
Beguile my faith, maybe, to the forlorn      
Extent of some sequestered murmuring         695   
Anent the vanities. No doubt I should,      
If mine were the one life that I have lived;      
But with a few good glimpses I have had      
Of heaven through the little holes in hell,      
I can half understand what price it is         700   
The poet pays, at one time and another,      
For those indemnifying interludes      
That are to be the kernel in what lives      
To shrine him when the new-born men come singing.      
   
“So do I comprehend what I have read         705   
From even the squeezed items of account      
Which I have to my credit in that book      
Whereof the leaves are ages and the text      
Eternity. What do I care to-day      
For pages that have nothing? I have lived,         710   
And I have died, and I have lived again;      
And I am very comfortable. Yes,      
Though I look back through barren years enough      
To make me seem—as I transmute myself      
In downward retrospect from what I am—         715   
As unproductive and as unconvinced      
Of living bread and the soul’s eternal draught      
As a frog on a Passover-cake in a streamless desert,—      
Still do I trust the light that I have earned,      
And having earned, received. You shake your head,         720   
But do not say that you will shake it off.      
   
“Meanwhile I have the flowers and the grass,      
My brothers here the trees, and all July      
To make me joyous. Why do you shake your head?      
Why do you laugh?—because you are so young?         725   
Do you think if you laugh hard enough the truth      
Will go to sleep? Do you think of any couch      
Made soft enough to put the truth to sleep?      
Do you think there are no proper comedies      
But yours that have the fashion? For example,         730   
Do you think that I forget, or shall forget,      
One friendless, fat, fantastic nondescript      
Who knew the ways of laughter on low roads,—      
A vagabond, a drunkard, and a sponge,      
But always a free creature with a soul?         735   
I bring him back, though not without misgivings,      
And caution you to damn him sparingly.      
   
“Count Pretzel von Würzburger, the Obscene      
(The beggar may have had another name,      
But no man to my knowledge ever knew it)         740   
Was a poet and a skeptic and a critic,      
And in his own mad manner a musician:      
He found an old piano in a bar-room,      
And it was his career—three nights a week,      
From ten o’clock till twelve—to make it rattle;         745   
And then, when I was just far down enough      
To sit and watch him with his long straight hair,      
And pity him, and think he looked like Liszt,      
I might have glorified a musical      
Steam-engine, or a xylophone. The Count         750   
Played half of everything and ‘improvised’      
The rest: he told me once that he was born      
With a genius in him that ‘prohibited      
Complete fidelity,’ and that his art      
‘Confessed vagaries,’ therefore. But I made         755   
Kind reckoning of his vagaries then:      
I had the whole great pathos of the man      
To purify me, and all sorts of music      
To give me spiritual nourishment      
And cerebral athletics; for the Count         760   
Played indiscriminately—with an f,      
And with incurable presto—cradle-songs      
And carnivals, spring-songs and funeral marches,      
The Marseillaise and Schubert’s Serenade—      
And always in a way to make me think         765   
Procrustes had the germ of music in him.      
And when this interesting reprobate      
Began to talk—then there were more vagaries:      
He made a reeking fetich of all filth,      
Apparently; but there was yet revealed         770   
About him, through his words and on his flesh,      
That ostracizing nimbus of a soul’s      
Abject, apologetic purity—      
That phosphorescence of sincerity—      
Which indicates the curse and the salvation         775   
Of a life wherein starved art may never perish.      
   
“One evening I remember clearliest      
Of all that I passed with him. Having wrought,      
With his nerve-ploughing ingenuity,      
The Träumerei into a Titan’s nightmare,         780   
The man sat down across the table from me      
And all at once was ominously decent.      
‘“The more we measure what is ours to use,”’      
He said then, wiping his froth-plastered mouth      
With the inside of his hand, ‘“the less we groan         785   
For what the gods refuse.” I’ve had that sleeved      
A decade for you. Now but one more stein,      
And I shall be prevailed upon to read      
The only sonnet I have ever made;      
And after that, if you propitiate         790   
Gambrinus, I shall play you that Andante      
As the world has never heard it played before.’      
So saying, he produced a piece of paper,      
Unfolded it, and read, ‘SONNET UNIQUE      
DE PRETZEL VON WURZBURGER, DIT L’OBSCÉNE:—         795   
   
“‘Carmichael had a kind of joke-disease,      
And he had queer things fastened on his wall.      
There are three green china frogs that I recall      
More potently than anything, for these      
Three frogs have demonstrated, by degrees,         800   
What curse was on the man to make him fall:      
“They are not ordinary frogs at all,      
They are the Frogs of Aristophanes.”      
   
“‘God! how he laughed whenever he said that;      
And how we caught from one another’s eyes         805   
The flash of what a tongue could never tell!      
We always laughed at him, no matter what      
The joke was worth. But when a man’s brain dies,      
We are not always glad … Poor Carmichael!’      
   
“‘I am a sowbug and a necrophile,’         810   
Said Pretzel, ‘and the gods are growing old;      
The stars are singing Golden hair to gray,      
Green leaf to yellow leaf,—or chlorophyl      
To xanthophyl, to be more scientific,—      
So speed me one more stein. You may believe         815   
That I’m a mendicant, but I am not:      
For though it look to you that I go begging,      
The truth is I go giving—giving all      
My strength and all my personality,      
My wisdom and experience—all myself,         820   
To make it final—for your preservation;      
Though I be not the one thing or the other,      
Though I strike between the sunset and the dawn,      
Though I be cliff-rubbed wreckage on the shoals      
Of Circumstance,—doubt not that I comprise,         825   
Far more than my appearance. Here he comes;      
Now drink to good old Pretzel! Drink down Pretzel!      
Quousque tandem, Pretzel, and O Lord,      
How long! But let regret go hang: the good      
Die first, and of the poor did many cease         830   
To be. Beethoven after Wordsworth. Prosit!      
There were geniuses among the trilobites,      
And I suspect that I was one of them.’      
“How much of him was earnest and how much      
Fantastic, I know not; nor do I need         835   
Profounder knowledge to exonerate      
The squalor or the folly of a man      
Than consciousness—though even the crude laugh      
Of indigent Priapus follow it—      
That I get good of him. And if you like him,         840   
Then some time in the future, past a doubt,      
You’ll have him in a book, make metres of him,—      
To the great delight of Mr. Killigrew,      
And the grief of all your kinsmen. Christian shame      
And self-confuted Orientalism         845   
For the more sagacious of them; vulture-tracks      
Of my Promethean bile for the rest of them;      
And that will be a joke. There’s nothing quite      
So funny as a joke that’s lost on earth      
And laughed at by the gods. Your devil knows it.         850   
   
“I come to like your Mr. Killigrew,      
And I rejoice that you speak well of him.      
The sprouts of human blossoming are in him,      
And useful eyes—if he will open them;      
But one thing ails the man. He smiles too much.         855   
He comes to see me once or twice a week,      
And I must tell him that he smiles too much.      
If I were Socrates, it would be simple.”      
   
Epistle Number Three was longer coming.      
I waited for it, even worried for it—         860   
Though Killigrew, and of his own free will,      
Had written reassuring little scraps      
From time to time, and I had valued them      
The more for being his. “The Sage,” he said,      
“From all that I can see, is doing well—         865   
I should say very well. Three meals a day,      
Siestas, and innumerable pipes—      
Not to the tune of water on the stones,      
But rather to the tune of his own Ego,      
Which seems to be about the same as God.         870   
But I was always weak in metaphysics,      
And pray therefore that you be lenient.      
I’m going to be married in December,      
And I have made a poem that will scan—      
So Plunket says. You said the other wouldn’t:         875   
   
  “Augustus Plunket, Ph.D.,      
    And oh, the Bishop’s daughter;      
  A very learned man was he      
    And in twelve weeks he got her;      
   
  And oh, she was as fair to see         880   
  As pippins on the pippin tree …      
  Tu, tui, tibi, te,—chubs in the mill water.      
   
“Connotative, succinct, and erudite;      
Three dots to boot. Now goodman Killigrew      
May wind an epic one of these glad years,         885   
And after that who knoweth but the Lord—      
The Lord of Hosts who is the King of Glory?”      
   
Still, when the Captain’s own words were before me,      
I seemed to read from them, or into them,      
The protest of a mortuary joy         890   
Not all substantiating Killigrew’s      
Off-hand assurance. The man’s face came back      
The while I read them, and that look again,      
Which I had seen so often, came back with it.      
I do not know that I can say just why,         895   
But I felt the feathery touch of something wrong:—      
   
“Since last I wrote—and I fear weeks have gone      
Too far for me to leave my gratitude      
Unuttered for its own acknowledgment—      
I have won, without the magic of Amphion         900   
Without the songs of Orpheus or Apollo,      
The frank regard—and with it, if you like,      
The fledged respect—of three quick-footed friends.      
(‘Nothing is there more marvelous than man,’      
Said Sophocles; and I say after him:         905   
‘He traps and captures, all-inventive one,      
The light birds and the creatures of the wold,      
And in his nets the fishes of the sea.’)      
Once they were pictures, painted on the air,      
Faint with eternal color, colorless,—         910   
But now they are not pictures, they are fowls.      
   
“At first they stood aloof and cocked their small,      
Smooth, prudent heads at me and made as if,      
With a cryptic idiotic melancholy,      
To look authoritative and sagacious;         915   
But when I tossed a piece of apple to them,      
They scattered back with a discord of short squawks      
And then came forward with a craftiness      
That made me think of Eden. Atropos      
Came first, and having grabbed the morsel up,         920   
Ran flapping far away and out of sight,      
With Clotho and Lachesis hard after her;      
But finally the three fared all alike,      
And next day I persuaded them with corn.      
In a week they came and had it from my fingers         925   
And looked up at me while I pinched their bills      
And made them sneeze. Count Pretzel’s Carmichael      
Had said they were not ordinary birds      
At all,—and they are not: they are the Fates,      
Foredoomed of their own insufficiency         930   
To be assimilated.—Do not think,      
Because in my contented isolation      
It suits me at this time to be jocose,      
That I am nailing reason to the cross,      
Or that I set the bauble and the bells         935   
Above the crucible; for I do nought,      
Say nought, but with an ancient levity      
That is the forbear of all earnestness.      
   
“The cross, I said.—I had a dream last night:      
A dream not like to any other dream         940   
That I remember. I was all alone,      
Sitting as I do now beneath a tree,      
But looking not, as I am looking now,      
Against the sunlight. There was neither sun      
Nor moon, nor do I think of any stars;         945   
Yet there was light, and there were cedar trees,      
And there were sycamores. I lay at rest,      
Or should have seemed at rest, within a trough      
Between two giant roots. A weariness      
Was on me, and I would have gone to sleep,         950   
But I had not the courage. If I slept,      
I feared that I should never wake again;      
And if I did not sleep I should go mad,      
And with my own dull tools, which I had used      
With wretched skill so long, hack out my life.         955   
And while I lay there, tortured out of death,      
Faint waves of cold, as if the dead were breathing,      
Came over me and through me; and I felt      
Quick fearful tears of anguish on my face      
And in my throat. But soon, and in the distance,         960   
Concealed, importunate, there was a sound      
Of coming steps,—and I was not afraid;      
No, I was not afraid then, I was glad;      
For I could feel, with every thought, the Man,      
The Mystery, the Child, a footfall nearer.         965   
Then, when he stood before me, there was no      
Surprise, there was no questioning: I knew him,      
As I had known him always; and he smiled.      
‘Why are you here?’ he asked; and reaching down,      
He took up my dull blades and rubbed his thumb         970   
Across the edges of them and then smiled      
Once more.—‘I was a carpenter,’ I said,      
‘But there was nothing in the world to do.’—      
‘Nothing?’ said he.—‘No, nothing,’ I replied.—      
‘But are you sure,’ he asked, ‘that you have skill?         975   
And are you sure that you have learned your trade?      
No, you are not.’—He looked at me and laughed      
As he said that; but I did not laugh then,      
Although I might have laughed.—‘They are dull,’ said he;      
‘They were not very sharp if they were ground;         980   
But they are what you have, and they will earn      
What you have not. So take them as they are,      
Grind them and clean them, put new handles to them,      
And then go learn your trade in Nazareth.      
Only be sure that you find Nazareth.’—         985   
‘But if I starve—what then?’ said I.—He smiled.      
   
“Now I call that as curious a dream      
As ever Meleager’s mother had,—      
Æneas, Alcibiades, or Jacob.      
I’ll not except the scientist who dreamed         990   
That he was Adam and that he was Eve      
At the same time; or yet that other man      
Who dreamed that he was Æschylus, reborn      
To clutch, combine, compensate, and adjust      
The plunging and unfathomable chorus         995   
Wherein we catch, like a bacchanale through thunder,      
The chanting of the new Eumenides,      
Implacable, renascent, farcical,      
Triumphant, and American. He did it,      
But did it in a dream. When he awoke         1000   
One phrase of it remained; one verse of it      
Went singing through the remnant of his life      
Like a bag-pipe through a mad-house.—He died young,      
And if I ponder the small history      
That I have gleaned of him by scattered roads,         1005   
The more do I rejoice that he died young.      
That measure would have chased him all his days,      
Defeated him, deposed him, wasted him,      
And shrewdly ruined him—though in that ruin      
There would have lived, as always it has lived,         1010   
In ruin as in failure, the supreme      
Fulfilment unexpressed, the rhythm of God      
That beats unheard through songs of shattered men      
Who dream but cannot sound it.—He declined,      
From all that I have ever learned of him,         1015   
With absolute good-humor. No complaint,      
No groaning at the burden which is light,      
No brain-waste of impatience—‘Never mind,’      
He whispered, ‘for I might have written Odes.’      
   
“Speaking of odes now makes me think of ballads.         1020   
Your admirable Mr. Killigrew      
Has latterly committed what he calls      
A Ballad of London—London ‘Town,’ of course—      
And he has wished that I pass judgment on      
He says there is a ‘generosity’         1025   
About it, and a ‘sympathetic insight;’      
And there are strong lines in it, so he says.      
But who am I that he should make of me      
A judge? You are his friend, and you know best      
The measure of his jingle. I am old,         1030   
And you are young. Be sure, I may go back      
To squeak for you the tunes of yesterday      
On my old fiddle—or what’s left of it—      
And give you as I’m able a young sound;      
But all the while I do it I remain         1035   
One of Apollo’s pensioners (and yours),      
An usher in the Palace of the Sun,      
A candidate for mattocks and trombones      
(The brass-band will be indispensable),      
A patron of high science, but no critic.         1040   
So I shall have to tell him, I suppose,      
That I read nothing now but Wordsworth, Pope,      
Lucretius, Robert Burns, and William Shakespeare.      
Now this is Mr. Killigrew’s performance:      
   
  “‘Say, do you go to London Town,         1045   
    You with the golden feather?’—      
  ‘And if I go to London Town      
    With my golden feather?’—      
  ‘These autumn roads are bright and brown,      
  The season wears a russet crown;         1050   
  And if you go to London Town,      
    We’ll go down together.’      
   
“I cannot say for certain, but I think      
The brown bright nightingale was half assuaged      
Before your Mr. Killigrew was born.         1055   
If I have erred in my chronology,      
No matter,—for the feathered man sings now:      
   
“‘Yes, I go to London Town’      
    (Merrily waved the feather),      
  ‘And if you go to London Town,         1060   
    Yes, we’ll go together.’      
   
  So in the autumn bright and brown,      
  Just as the year began to frown,      
  All the way to London Town      
    Rode the two together.         1065   
   
  “‘I go to marry a fair maid’      
    (Lightly swung the feather)—      
  ‘Pardie, a true and loyal maid’      
    (Oh, the swinging feather!)—      
  ‘For us the wedding gold is weighed,         1070   
  For us the feast will soon be laid;      
  We’ll make a gallant show,’ he said,—      
    ‘She and I together.’      
   
“The feathered man may do a thousand things,      
And all go smiling; but the feathered man         1075   
May do too much. Now mark how he continues:      
   
  “‘And you—you go to London Town?’      
    (Breezes waved the feather)—      
    ‘Yes, I go to London Town.’      
    (Ah, the stinging feather!)—         1080   
  ‘Why do you go, my merry blade?      
  Like me, to marry a fair maid?’—      
  ‘Why do I go? … God knows,’ he said;      
    And on they rode together.      
   
“Now you have read it through, and you know best         1085   
What worth it has. We fellows with gray hair      
Who march with sticks to music that is gray      
Judge not your vanguard fifing. You are one      
To judge; and you will tell me what you think.      
Barring the Town, the Fair Maid, and the Feather,         1090   
The dialogue and those parentheses,      
You cherish it, undoubtedly. ‘Pardie!’      
You call it, with a few conservative      
Allowances, an excellent small thing      
For patient inexperience to do:         1095   
Derivative, you say,—still rather pretty.      
But what is wrong with Mr. Killigrew?      
Is he in love, or has he read Rossetti?—      
Forgive me! I am old and garrulous …      
When are you coming back to Tilbury Town?”         1100

III. Captain Craig, Etc.   
1. Captain Craig: III.   
     
III

I FOUND the old man sitting in his bed,      
Propped up and uncomplaining. On a chair      
Beside him was a dreary bowl of broth,      
A magazine, some glasses, and a pipe.      
“I do not light it nowadays,” he said,         1105   
“But keep it for an antique influence      
That it exerts, an aura that it sheds—      
Like hautboys, or Provence. You understand:      
The charred memorial defeats us yet,      
But think you not for always. We are young,         1110   
And we are friends of time. Time that made smoke      
Will drive away the smoke, and we shall know      
The work that we are doing. We shall build      
With embers of all shrines one pyramid,      
And we shall have the most resplendent flame         1115   
From earth to heaven, as the old words go,      
And we shall need no smoke … Why don’t you laugh?”      
   
I gazed into those calm, half-lighted eyes      
And smiled at them with grim obedience.      
He told me that I did it very well,         1120   
But added that I should undoubtedly      
Do better in the future: “There is nothing,”      
He said, “so beneficial in a sick-room      
As a well-bred spontaneity of manner.      
Your sympathetic scowl obtrudes itself,         1125   
And is indeed surprising. After death,      
Were you to take it with you to your coffin      
An unimaginative man might think      
That you had lost your life in worrying      
To find out what it was that worried you.         1130   
The ways of unimaginative men      
Are singularly fierce … Why do you stand?      
Sit here and watch me while I take this soup.      
The doctor likes it, therefore it is good.      
   
“The man who wrote the decalogue,” pursued         1135   
The Captain, having swallowed four or five      
Heroic spoonfuls of his lukewarm broth,      
“Forgot the doctors. And I think sometimes      
The man of Galilee (or, if you choose,      
The men who made the sayings of the man)         1140   
Like Buddha, and the others who have seen,      
Was to men’s loss the Poet—though it be      
The Poet only of him we revere,      
The Poet we remember. We have put      
The prose of him so far away from us,         1145   
The fear of him so crudely over us,      
That I have wondered—wondered.”—Cautiously,      
But yet as one were cautious in a dream,      
He set the bowl down on the chair again,      
Crossed his thin fingers, looked me in the face,         1150   
And looking smiled a little. “Go away,”      
He said at last, “and let me go to sleep.      
I told you I should eat, but I shall not.      
To-morrow I shall eat; and I shall read      
Some clauses of a jocund instrument         1155   
That I have been preparing here of late      
For you and for the rest, assuredly.      
‘Attend the testament of Captain Craig:      
Good citizens, good fathers and your sons,      
Good mothers and your daughters.’ I should say so.         1160   
Now go away and let me go to sleep.”      
   
I stood before him and held out my hand,      
He took it, pressed it; and I felt again      
The sick soft closing on it. He would not      
Let go, but lay there, looking up to me         1165   
With eyes that had a sheen of water on them      
And a faint wet spark within them. So he clung,      
Tenaciously, with fingers icy warm,      
And eyes too full to keep the sheen unbroken.      
I looked at him. The fingers closed hard once,         1170   
And then fell down.—I should have left him then.      
   
But when we found him the next afternoon,      
My first thought was that he had made his eyes      
Miraculously smaller. They were sharp      
And hard and dry, and the spark in them was dry.         1175   
For a glance it all but seemed as if the man      
Had artfully forsworn the brimming gaze      
Of yesterday, and with a wizard strength      
Inveigled in, reduced, and vitalized      
The straw-shine of October; and had that         1180   
Been truth, we should have humored him no less,      
Albeit he had fooled us,—for he said      
That we had made him glad by coming to him.      
And he was glad: the manner of his words      
Revealed the source of them; and the gray smile         1185   
Which lingered like a twilight on his face      
Told of its own slow fading that it held      
The promise of the sun. Cadaverous,      
God knows it was; and we knew it was honest.      
“So you have come to hear the old man read         1190   
To you from his last will and testament:      
Well, it will not be long—not very long—      
So listen.” He brought out from underneath      
His pillow a new manuscript, and said,      
“You have done well to come and hear me read         1195   
My testament. There are men in the world      
Who say of me, if they remember me,      
That I am poor;—and I believe the ways      
Of certain men who never find things out      
Are stranger than the way Lord Bacon wrote         1200   
Leviticus, and Faust.” He fixed his eyes      
Abstractedly on something far from us,      
And with a look that I remembered well      
Gazed hard the while we waited. But at length      
He found himself and soon began to chant,         1205   
With a fitful shift at thin sonorousness      
The jocund instrument; and had he been      
Definitively parceling to us      
All Kimberley and half of Ballarat,      
The lordly quaver of his poor old words         1210   
Could not have been the more magniloquent.      
No promise of dead carbon or of gold,      
However, flashed in ambush to corrupt us:      
   
“I, Captain Craig, abhorred iconoclast,      
Sage-errant, favored of the Mysteries,         1215   
And self-reputed humorist at large,      
Do now, confessed of my world-worshiping,      
Time-questioning, sun-fearing, and heart-yielding,      
Approve and unreservedly devise      
To you and your assigns for evermore,         1220   
God’s universe and yours. If I had won      
What first I sought, I might have made you beam      
By giving less; but now I make you laugh      
By giving more than what had made you beam,      
And it is well. No man has ever done         1225   
The deed of humor that God promises,      
But now and then we know tragedians      
Reform, and in denial too divine      
For sacrifice, too firm for ecstasy,      
Record in letters, or in books they write,         1230   
What fragment of God’s humor they have caught,      
What earnest of its rhythm; and I believe      
That I, in having somewhat recognized      
The formal measure of it, have endured      
The discord of infirmity no less         1235   
Through fortune than by failure. What men lose,      
Man gains; and what man gains reports itself      
In losses we but vaguely deprecate,      
So they be not for us;—and this is right,      
Except that when the devil in the sun         1240   
Misguides us we go darkly where the shine      
Misleads us, and we know not what we see:      
We know not if we climb or if we fall;      
And if we fly, we know not where we fly.      
   
“And here do I insert an urging clause         1245   
For climbers and up-fliers of all sorts,      
Cliff-climbers and high-fliers: Phaethon,      
Bellerophon, and Icarus did each      
Go gloriously up, and each in turn      
Did famously come down—as you have read         1250   
In poems and elsewhere; but other men      
Have mounted where no fame has followed them,      
And we have had no sight, no news of them,      
And we have heard no crash. The crash may count,      
Undoubtedly, and earth be fairer for it;         1255   
Yet none save creatures out of harmony      
Have ever, in their fealty to the flesh,      
Made crashing an ideal. It is the flesh      
That ails us, for the spirit knows no qualm,      
No failure, no down-falling: so climb high,         1260   
And having set your steps regard not much      
The downward laughter clinging at your feet,      
Nor overmuch the warning; only know,      
As well as you know dawn from lantern-light,      
That far above you, for you, and within you,         1265   
There burns and shines and lives, unwavering      
And always yours, the truth. Take on yourself      
But your sincerity, and you take on      
Good promise for all climbing: fly for truth,      
And hell shall have no storm to crush your flight,         1270   
No laughter to vex down your loyalty.      
   
“I think you may be smiling at me now—      
And if I make you smile, so much the better;      
For I would have you know that I rejoice      
Always to see the thing that I would see—         1275   
The righteous thing, the wise thing. I rejoice      
Always to think that any thought of mine,      
Or any word or any deed of mine,      
May grant sufficient of what fortifies      
Good feeling and the courage of calm joy         1280   
To make the joke worth while. Contrariwise,      
When I review some faces I have known—      
Sad faces, hungry faces—and reflect      
On thoughts I might have moulded, human words      
I might have said, straightway it saddens me         1285   
To feel perforce that had I not been mute      
And actionless, I might have made them bright      
Somehow, though only for the moment. Yes,      
Howbeit I may confess the vanities,      
It saddens me; and sadness, of all things         1290   
Miscounted wisdom, and the most of all      
When warmed with old illusions and regrets,      
I mark the selfishest, and on like lines      
The shrewdest. For your sadness makes you climb      
With dragging footsteps, and it makes you groan;         1295   
It hinders you when most you would be free,      
And there are many days it wearies you      
Beyond the toil itself. And if the load      
It lays on you may not be shaken off      
Till you have known what now you do not know—         1300   
Meanwhile you climb; and he climbs best who sees      
Above him truth burn faithfulest, and feels      
Within him truth burn purest. Climb or fall,      
One road remains and one firm guidance always;      
One way that shall be taken, climb or fall.         1305   
   
“But ‘falling, falling, falling.’ There’s your song,      
The cradle-song that sings you to the grave.      
What is it your bewildered poet says?—      
   
“‘The toiling ocean thunders of unrest      
And aching desolation; the still sea         1310   
Paints but an outward calm that mocks itself      
To the final and irrefragable sleep      
That owns no shifting fury; and the shoals      
Of ages are but records of regret      
Where Time, the sun’s arch-phantom, writes on sand         1315   
The prelude of his ancient nothingness.’      
   
“’T is easy to compound a dirge like that,      
And it is easy to be deceived      
And alienated by the fleshless note      
Of half-world yearning in it; but the truth         1320   
To which we all are tending,—charlatans      
And architects alike, artificers      
In tinsel as in gold, evangelists      
Of ruin and redemption, all alike,—      
The truth we seek and equally the truth         1325   
We do not seek, but yet may not escape,      
Was never found alone through flesh contempt      
Or through flesh reverence. Look east and west      
And we may read the story: where the light      
Shone first the shade now darkens; where the shade         1330   
Clung first, the light fights westward—though the shade      
Still feeds, and there is yet the Orient.      
   
“But there is this to be remembered always:      
Whatever be the altitude you reach,      
You do not rise alone; nor do you fall         1335   
But you drag others down to more or less      
Than your preferred abasement. God forbid      
That ever I should preach, and in my zeal      
Forget that I was born an humorist;      
But now, for once, before I go away,         1340   
I beg of you to be magnanimous      
A moment, while I speak to please myself:      
   
“Though I have heard it variously sung      
That even in the fury and the clash      
Of battles, and the closer fights of men         1345   
When silence gives the knowing world no sign,      
One flower there is, though crushed and cursed it be,      
Keeps rooted through all tumult and all scorn,—      
Still do I find, when I look sharply down,      
There’s yet another flower that grows well         1350   
And has the most unconscionable roots      
Of any weed on earth. Perennial      
It grows, and has the name of Selfishness;      
No doubt you call it Love. In either case,      
You propagate it with a diligence         1355   
That hardly were outmeasured had its leaf      
The very juice in it of that famed herb      
Which gave back breath to Glaucus; and I know      
That in the twilight, after the day’s work,      
You take your little children in your arms,         1360   
Or lead them by their credulous frail hands      
Benignly out and through the garden-gate      
And show them there the things that you have raised;      
Not everything, perchance, but always one      
Miraculously rooted flower plot         1365   
Which is your pride, their pattern. Socrates,      
Could he be with you there at such a time,      
Would have some unsolicited shrewd words      
To say that you might hearken to; but I      
Say nothing, for I am not Socrates.—         1370   
So much, good friends, for flowers; and I thank you.      
   
“There was a poet once who would have roared      
Away the world and had an end of stars.      
Where was he when I quoted him?—oh, yes:      
’T is easy for a man to link loud words         1375   
With woeful pomp and unschooled emphasis      
And add one thundered contribution more      
To the dirges of all-hollowness, I said;      
But here again I find the question set      
Before me, after turning books on books         1380   
And looking soulward through man after man,      
If there indeed be more determining      
Play-service in remotely sounding down      
The world’s one-sidedness. If I judge right,      
Your pounding protestations, echoing         1385   
Their burden of unfraught futility,      
Surge back to mute forgetfulness at last      
And have a kind of sunny, sullen end,      
Like any cold north storm.—But there are few      
Still seas that have no life to profit them,         1390   
And even in such currents of the mind      
As have no tide-rush in them, but are drowsed,      
Crude thoughts may dart in armor and upspring      
With waking sound, when all is dim with peace,      
Like sturgeons in the twilight out of Lethe;         1395   
And though they be discordant, hard, grotesque,      
And all unwelcome to the lethargy      
That you think means repose, you know as well      
As if your names were shouted when they leap,      
And when they leap you listen.—Ah! friends, friends,         1400   
There are these things we do not like to know:      
They trouble us, they make us hesitate,      
They touch us, and we try to put them off.      
We banish one another and then say      
That we are left alone: the midnight leaf         1405   
That rattles where it hangs above the snow—      
Gaunt, fluttering, forlorn—scarcely may seem      
So cold in all its palsied loneliness      
As we, we frozen brothers, who have yet      
Profoundly and severely to find out         1410   
That there is more of unpermitted love      
In most men’s reticence than most men think.      
   
“Once, when I made it out fond-headedness      
To say that we should ever be apprised      
Of our deserts and their emolument         1415   
At all but in the specious way of words,      
The wisdom of a warm thought woke within me      
And I could read the sun. Then did I turn      
My long-defeated face full to the world,      
And through the clouded warfare of it all         1420   
Discern the light. Through dusk that hindered it,      
I found the truth, and for the first whole time      
Knew then that we were climbing. Not as one      
Who mounts along with his experience      
Bound on him like an Old Man of the Sea—         1425   
Not as a moral pedant who drags chains      
Of his unearned ideals after him      
And always to the lead-like thud they make      
Attunes a cold inhospitable chant      
Of All Things Easy to the Non-Attached,—         1430   
But as a man, a scarred man among men,      
I knew it, and I felt the strings of thought      
Between us to pull tight the while I strove;      
And if a curse came ringing now and then      
To my defended ears, how could I know         1435   
The light that burned above me and within me,      
And at the same time put on cap-and-bells      
For such as yet were groping?”      
   
        Killigrew      
Made there as if to stifle a small cough.         1440   
I might have kicked him, but regret forbade      
The subtle admonition; and indeed      
When afterwards I reprimanded him,      
The fellow never knew quite what I meant.      
I may have been unjust.—The Captain read         1445   
Right on, without a chuckle or a pause,      
As if he had heard nothing:      
   
        “How, forsooth,      
Shall any man, by curses or by groans,      
Or by the laugh-jarred stillness of all hell,         1450   
Be so drawn down to servitude again      
That on some backward level of lost laws      
And undivined relations, he may know      
No longer Love’s imperative resource,      
Firm once and his, well treasured then, but now         1455   
Too fondly thrown away? And if there come      
But once on all his journey, singing down      
To find him, the gold-throated forward call,      
What way but one, what but the forward way,      
Shall after that call guide him? When his ears         1460   
Have earned an inward skill to methodize      
The clash of all crossed voices and all noises,      
How shall he grope to be confused again,      
As he has been, by discord? When his eyes      
Have read the book of wisdom in the sun,         1465   
And after dark deciphered it on earth,      
How shall he turn them back to scan some huge      
Blood-lettered protest of bewildered men      
That hunger while he feeds where they would starve      
And all absurdly perish?”         1470   
   
        Killigrew      
Looked hard for a subtile object on the wall,      
And, having found it, sighed. The Captain paused:      
If he grew tedious, most assuredly      
Did he crave pardon of us; he had feared         1475   
Beforehand that he might be wearisome,      
But there was not much more of it, he said,—      
No more than just enough. And we rejoiced      
That he should look so kindly on us then.      
(“Commend me to a dying man’s grimace         1480   
For absolute humor, always,” Killigrew      
Maintains; but I know better.)      
   
        “Work for them,      
You tell me? Work the folly out of them?      
Go back to them and teach them how to climb;         1485   
While you teach caterpillars how to fly?      
You tell me that Alnaschar is a fool      
Because he dreams? And what is this you ask?      
I make him wise? I teach him to be still?      
While you go polishing the Pyramids,         1490   
I hold Alnaschar’s feet? And while you have      
The ghost of Memnon’s image all day singing,      
I sit with aching arms and hardly catch      
A few spilled echoes of the song of songs—      
The song that I should have as utterly         1495   
For mine as other men should once have had      
The sweetest a glad shepherd ever trilled      
In Sharon, long ago? Is this the way      
For me to do good climbing any more      
Than Phaethon’s? Do you think the golden tone         1500   
Of that far-singing call you all have heard      
Means any more for you than you should be      
Wise-heartedly, glad-heartedly yourselves?      
Do this, there is no more for you to do;      
And you have no dread left, no shame, no scorn.         1505   
And while you have your wisdom and your gold,      
Songs calling, and the Princess in your arms,      
Remember, if you like, from time to time,      
Down yonder where the clouded millions go,      
Your bloody-knuckled scullions are not slaves,         1510   
Your children of Alnaschar are not fools.      
   
“Nor are they quite so foreign or far down      
As you may think to see them. What you take      
To be the cursedest mean thing that crawls      
On earth is nearer to you than you know:         1515   
You may not ever crush him but you lose,      
You may not ever shield him but you gain—      
As he, with all his crookedness, gains with you.      
Your preaching and your teaching, your achieving,      
Your lifting up and your discovering,         1520   
Are more than often—more than you have dreamed—      
The world-refracted evidence of what      
Your dream denies. You cannot hide yourselves      
In any multitude or solitude,      
Or mask yourselves in any studied guise         1525   
Of hardness or of old humility,      
But soon by some discriminating man—      
Some humorist at large, like Socrates—      
You get yourselves found out.—Now I should be      
Found out without an effort. For example:         1530   
When I go riding, trimmed and shaved again,      
Consistent, adequate, respectable,—      
Some citizen, for curiosity,      
Will ask of a good neighbor, ‘What is this?’—      
‘It is the funeral of Captain Craig,’         1535   
Will be the neighbor’s word.—‘And who, good man,      
Was Captain Craig?’—‘He was an humorist;      
And we are told that there is nothing more      
For any man alive to say of him.’—      
‘There is nothing very strange in that,’ says A;         1540   
‘But the brass band? What has he done to be      
Blown through like this by cornets and trombones?      
And here you have this incompatible dirge—      
Where are the jokes in that?’—Then B should say:      
‘Maintained his humor: nothing more or less.         1545   
The story goes that on the day before      
He died—some say a week, but that’s a trifle—      
He said, with a subdued facetiousness,      
“Play Handel, not Chopin; assuredly not      
Chopin.”’—He was indeed an humorist.”         1550   
   
He made the paper fall down at arm’s length;      
And with a tension of half-quizzical      
Benignity that made it hard for us,      
He looked up—first at Morgan, then at me—      
Almost, I thought, as if his eyes would ask         1555   
If we were satisfied; and as he looked,      
The tremor of an old heart’s weariness      
Was on his mouth. He gazed at each of us,      
But spoke no further word that afternoon.      
He put away the paper, closed his eyes,         1560   
And went to sleep with his lips flickering;      
And after that we left him.—At midnight      
Plunket and I looked in; but he still slept,      
And everything was going as it should.      
The watchman yawned, rattled his newspaper,         1565   
And wondered what it was that ailed his lamp.      
   
Next day we found the Captain wide awake,      
Propped up, and searching dimly with a spoon      
Through another dreary dish of chicken-broth,      
Which he raised up to me, at my approach,         1570   
So fervently and so unconsciously,      
That one could only laugh. He looked again      
At each of us, and as he looked he frowned;      
And there was something in that frown of his      
That none of us had ever seen before.         1575   
“Kind friends,” he said, “be sure that I rejoice      
To know that you have come to visit me;      
Be sure I speak with undisguised words      
And earnest, when I say that I rejoice.”—      
“But what the devil!” whispered Killigrew.         1580   
I kicked him, for I thought I understood.      
The old man’s eyes had glimmered wearily      
At first, but now they glittered like to those      
Of a glad fish. “Beyond a doubt,” said he,      
“My dream this morning was more singular         1585   
Than any other I have ever known.      
Give me that I might live ten thousand years,      
And all those years do nothing but have dreams,      
I doubt me much if any one of them      
Could be so quaint or so fantastical,         1590   
So pregnant, as a dream of mine this morning.      
You may not think it any more than odd;      
You may not feel—you cannot wholly feel—      
How droll it was:—I dreamed that I found Hamlet—      
Found him at work, drenched with an angry sweat,         1595   
Predestined, he declared with emphasis,      
To root out a large weed on Lethe wharf;      
And after I had watched him for some time,      
I laughed at him and told him that no root      
Would ever come the while he talked like that:         1600   
The power was not in him, I explained,      
For such compound accomplishment. He glared      
At me, of course,—next moment laughed at me,      
And finally laughed with me. I was right,      
And we had eisel on the strength of it:—         1605   
‘They tell me that this water is not good,’      
Said Hamlet, and you should have seen him smile.      
Conceited? Pelion and Ossa?—pah …      
   
“But anon comes in a crocodile. We stepped      
Adroitly down upon the back of him,         1610   
And away we went to an undiscovered country—      
A fertile place, but in more ways than one      
So like the region we had started from,      
That Hamlet straightway found another weed      
And there began to tug. I laughed again,         1615   
Till he cried out on me and on my mirth,      
Protesting all he knew: ‘The Fates,’ he said,      
‘Have ordered it that I shall have these roots.’      
But all at once a dreadful hunger seized him,      
And it was then we killed the crocodile—         1620   
Killed him and ate him. Washed with eisel down      
That luckless reptile was, to the last morsel;      
And there we were with flag-fens all around us,—      
And there was Hamlet, at his task again,      
Ridiculous. And while I watched his work,         1625   
The drollest of all changes came to pass.      
The weed had snapped off just above the root,      
Not warning him, and I was left alone.      
The bubbles rose, and I laughed heartily      
To think of him; I laughed when I woke up;         1630   
And when my soup came in I laughed again;      
I think I may have laughed a little—no?—      
Not when you came? … Why do you look like that?      
You don’t believe me? Crocodiles—why not?      
Who knows what he has eaten in his life?         1635   
Who knows but I have eaten Atropos?…      
‘Briar and oak for a soldier’s crown,’ you say?      
Provence? Oh, no … Had I been Socrates,      
Count Pretzel would have been the King of Spain.”      
   
Now of all casual things we might have said         1640   
To make the matter smooth at such a time,      
There may have been a few that we had found      
Sufficient. Recollection fails, however,      
To say that we said anything. We looked.      
Had he been Carmichael, we might have stood         1645   
Like faithful hypocrites and laughed at him;      
But the Captain was not Carmichael at all,      
For the Captain had no frogs: he had the sun.      
So there we waited, hungry for the word,—      
Tormented, unsophisticated, stretched—         1650   
Till, with a drawl, to save us, Killigrew      
Good-humoredly spoke out. The Captain fixed      
His eyes on him with some severity.      
   
“That was a funny dream, beyond a doubt,”      
Said Killigrew;—“too funny to be laughed at;         1655   
Too humorous, we mean.”—“Too humorous?”      
The Captain answered; “I approve of that.      
Proceed.”—We were not glad for Killigrew.      
“Well,” he went on, “’t was only this. You see      
My dream this morning was a droll one too:         1660   
I dreamed that a sad man was in my room,      
Sitting, as I do now, beside the bed.      
I questioned him, but he made no reply,—      
Said not a word, but sang.”—“Said not a word,      
But sang,” the Captain echoed. “Very good.         1665   
Now tell me what it was the sad man sang.”      
“Now that,” said Killigrew, constrainedly,      
And with a laugh that might have been left out,      
“Is why I know it must have been a dream.      
But there he was, and I lay in the bed         1670   
Like you; and I could see him just as well      
As you see my right hand. And for the songs      
He sang to me—there’s where the dream part comes.”      
   
“You don’t remember them?” the Captain said,      
With a weary little chuckle; “very well,         1675   
I might have guessed it. Never mind your dream,      
But let me go to sleep.”—For a moment then      
There was a frown on Killigrew’s good face,      
And then there was a smile. “Not quite,” said he;      
“The songs that he sang first were sorrowful,         1680   
And they were stranger than the man himself—      
And he was very strange; but I found out,      
Through all the gloom of him and of his music,      
That a—say, well, say mystic cheerfulness,      
Pervaded him; for slowly, as he sang,         1685   
There came a change, and I began to know      
The method of it all. Song after song      
Was ended; and when I had listened there      
For hours—I mean for dream-hours—hearing him,      
And always glad that I was hearing him,         1690   
There came another change—a great one. Tears      
Rolled out at last like bullets from his eyes,      
And I could hear them fall down on the floor      
Like shoes; and they were always marking time      
For the song that he was singing. I have lost         1695   
The greater number of his verses now,      
But there are some, like these, that I remember:      
   
        “‘Ten men from Zanzibar,      
        Black as iron hammers are,      
        Riding on a cable-car         1700   
        Down to Crowley’s theatre.’ …      
   
“Ten men?” the Captain interrupted there—      
“Ten men, my Euthyphron? That is beautiful.      
But never mind, I wish to go to sleep:      
Tell Cebes that I wish to go to sleep.…         1705   
O ye of little faith, your golden plumes      
Are like to drag … par-dee!”—We may have smiled      
In after days to think how Killigrew      
Had sacrificed himself to fight that silence,      
But we were grateful to him, none the less;         1710   
And if we smiled, that may have been the reason.      
But the good Captain for a long time then      
Said nothing: he lay quiet—fast asleep,      
For all that we could see. We waited there      
Till each of us, I fancy, must have made         1715   
The paper on the wall begin to squirm,      
And then got up to leave. My friends went out,      
And I was going, when the old man cried:      
“You leave me now—now it has come to this?      
What have I done to make you go? Come back!         1720   
Come back!”      
   
        There was a quaver in his cry      
That we shall not forget—reproachful, kind,      
Indignant, piteous. It seemed as one      
Marooned on treacherous tide-feeding sand         1725   
Were darkly calling over the still straits      
Between him and irrevocable shores      
Where now there was no lamp to fade for him,      
No call to give him answer. We were there      
Before him, but his eyes were not much turned         1730   
On us; nor was it very much to us      
That he began to speak the broken words,      
The scattered words, that he had left in him.      
   
“So it has come to this? And what is this?      
Death, do you call it? Death? And what is death?         1735   
Why do you look like that at me again?      
Why do you shrink your brows and shut your lips?      
If it be fear, then I can do no more      
Than hope for all of you that you may find      
Your promise of the sun; if it be grief         1740   
You feel, to think that this old face of mine      
May never look at you and laugh again,      
Then tell me why it is that you have gone      
So long with me, and followed me so far,      
And had me to believe you took my words         1745   
For more than ever misers did their gold?”      
   
He listened, but his eyes were far from us—      
Too far to make us turn to Killigrew,      
Or search the futile shelves of our own thoughts      
For golden-labeled insincerities         1750   
To make placebos of. The marrowy sense      
Of slow November rain that splashed against      
The shingles and the glass reminded us      
That we had brought umbrellas. He continued:      
“Oh, can it be that I, too credulous,         1755   
Have made myself believe that you believe      
Yourselves to be the men that you are not?      
I prove and I prize well your friendliness,      
But I would have that your last look at me      
Be not like this; for I would scan today         1760   
Strong thoughts on all your faces—no regret,      
No still commiseration—oh, not that!—      
No doubt, no fear. A man may be as brave      
As Ajax in the fury of his arms,      
And in the midmost warfare of his thoughts         1765   
Be frail as Paris … For the love, therefore,      
That brothered us when we stood back that day      
From Delium—the love that holds us now      
More than it held us at Amphipolis—      
Forget you not that he who in his work         1770   
Would mount from these low roads of measured shame      
To tread the leagueless highway must fling first      
And fling forevermore beyond his reach      
The shackles of a slave who doubts the sun.      
There is no servitude so fraudulent         1775   
As of a sun-shut mind; for ’t is the mind      
That makes you craven or invincible,      
Diseased or puissant. The mind will pay      
Ten thousand fold and be the richer then      
To grant new service; but the world pays hard,         1780   
And accurately sickens till in years      
The dole has eked its end and there is left      
What all of you are noting on all days      
In these Athenian streets, where squandered men      
Drag ruins of half-warriors to the grave—         1785   
Or to Hippocrates.”      
   
        His head fell back,      
And he lay still with wearied eyes half-closed.      
We waited, but a few faint words yet stayed:      
“Kind friends,” he said, “friends I have known so long,         1790   
Though I have jested with you in time past,      
Though I have stung your pride with epithets      
Not all forbearing,—still, when I am gone,      
Say Socrates wrought always for the best      
And for the wisest end … Give me the cup!         1795   
The truth is yours, God’s universe is yours …      
Good-by … good citizens … give me the cup” …      
Again we waited; and this time we knew      
Those lips of his that would not flicker down      
Had yet some fettered message for us there.         1800   
We waited, and we watched him. All at once,      
With a faint flash, the clouded eyes grew clear,      
And then we knew the man was coming back.      
We watched him, and I listened. The man smiled      
And looked about him—not regretfully,         1805   
Not anxiously; and when at last he spoke,      
Before the long drowse came to give him peace,      
One word was all he said. “Trombones,” he said.      
   
That evening, at “The Chrysalis” again,      
We smoked and looked at one another’s eyes,         1810   
And we were glad. The world had scattered ways      
For us to take, we knew; but for the time      
That one snug room where big beech logs roared smooth      
Defiance to the cold rough rain outside      
Sufficed. There were no scattered ways for us         1815   
That we could see just then, and we were glad:      
We were glad to be on earth, and we rejoiced      
No less for Captain Craig that he was gone.      
We might, for his dead benefit, have run      
The gamut of all human weaknesses         1820   
And uttered after-platitudes enough—      
Wrecked on his own abstractions, and all such—      
To drive away Gambrinus and the bead      
From Bernard’s ale; and I suppose we might      
Have praised, accordingly, the Lord of Hosts         1825   
For letting us believe that we were not      
The least and idlest of His handiwork.      
   
So Plunket, who had knowledge of all sorts,      
Yet hardly ever spoke, began to plink      
O tu, Palermo!—quaintly, with his nails,—         1830   
On Morgan’s fiddle, and at once got seized,      
As if he were some small thing, by the neck.      
Then the consummate Morgan, having told      
Explicitly what hardship might accrue      
To Plunket if he did that any more,         1835   
Made roaring chords and acrobatic runs—      
And then, with his kind eyes on Killigrew,      
Struck up the schoolgirls’ march in Lohengrin,      
So Killigrew might smile and stretch himself      
And have to light his pipe. When that was done         1840   
We knew that Morgan, by the looks of him,      
Was in the mood for almost anything      
From Bach to Offenbach; and of all times      
That he has ever played, that one somehow—      
That evening of the day the Captain died—         1845   
Stands out like one great verse of a good song,      
One strain that sings itself beyond the rest      
For magic and a glamour that it has.      
   
The ways have scattered for us, and all things      
Have changed; and we have wisdom, I doubt not,         1850   
More fit for the world’s work than we had then;      
But neither parted roads nor cent per cent      
May starve quite out the child that lives in us—      
The Child that is the Man, the Mystery,      
The Phœnix of the World. So, now and then,         1855   
That evening of the day the Captain died      
Returns to us; and there comes always with it      
The storm, the warm restraint, the fellowship,      
The friendship and the firelight, and the fiddle.      
So too there comes a day that followed it—         1860   
A windy, dreary day with a cold white shine,      
Which only gummed the tumbled frozen ruts      
That made us ache. The road was hard and long,      
But we had what we knew to comfort us,      
And we had the large humor of the thing         1865   
To make it advantageous; for men stopped      
And eyed us on that road from time to time,      
And on that road the children followed us;      
And all along that road the Tilbury Band      
Blared indiscreetly the Dead March in Saul.         1870

III. Captain Craig, Etc.   
2. Isaac and Archibald   
     
(To Mrs. Henry Richards)


ISAAC and Archibald were two old men.      
I knew them, and I may have laughed at them      
A little; but I must have honored them      
For they were old, and they were good to me.      
   
I do not think of either of them now,           5   
Without remembering, infallibly,      
A journey that I made one afternoon      
With Isaac to find out what Archibald      
Was doing with his oats. It was high time      
Those oats were cut, said Isaac; and he feared          10   
That Archibald—well, he could never feel      
Quite sure of Archibald. Accordingly      
The good old man invited me—that is,      
Permitted me—to go along with him;      
And I, with a small boy’s adhesiveness          15   
To competent old age, got up and went.      
   
I do not know that I cared overmuch      
For Archibald’s or anybody’s oats,      
But Archibald was quite another thing,      
And Isaac yet another; and the world          20   
Was wide, and there was gladness everywhere.      
We walked together down the River Road      
With all the warmth and wonder of the land      
Around us, and the wayside flash of leaves,—      
And Isaac said the day was glorious;          25   
But somewhere at the end of the first mile      
I found that I was figuring to find      
How long those ancient legs of his would keep      
The pace that he had set for them. The sun      
Was hot, and I was ready to sweat blood;          30   
But Isaac, for aught I could make of him,      
Was cool to his hat-band. So I said then      
With a dry gasp of affable despair,      
Something about the scorching days we have      
In August without knowing it sometimes;          35   
But Isaac said the day was like a dream,      
And praised the Lord, and talked about the breeze.      
I made a fair confession of the breeze,      
And crowded casually on his thought      
The nearness of a profitable nook          40   
That I could see. First I was half inclined      
To caution him that he was growing old,      
But something that was not compassion soon      
Made plain the folly of all subterfuge.      
Isaac was old, but not so old as that.          45   
   
So I proposed, without an overture,      
That we be seated in the shade a while,      
And Isaac made no murmur. Soon the talk      
Was turned on Archibald, and I began      
To feel some premonitions of a kind          50   
That only childhood knows; for the old man      
Had looked at me and clutched me with his eye,      
And asked if I had ever noticed things.      
I told him that I could not think of them,      
And I knew then, by the frown that left his face          55   
Unsatisfied, that I had injured him.      
“My good young friend,” he said, “you cannot feel      
What I have seen so long. You have the eyes—      
Oh, yes—but you have not the other things:      
The sight within that never will deceive,          60   
You do not know—you have no right to know;      
The twilight warning of experience,      
The singular idea of loneliness,—      
These are not yours. But they have long been mine,      
And they have shown me now for seven years          65   
That Archibald is changing. It is not      
So much that he should come to his last hand,      
And leave the game, and go the old way down;      
But I have known him in and out so long,      
And I have seen so much of good in him          70   
That other men have shared and have not seen,      
And I have gone so far through thick and thin,      
Through cold and fire with him, that now it brings      
To this old heart of mine an ache that you      
Have not yet lived enough to know about.          75   
But even unto you, and your boy’s faith,      
Your freedom, and your untried confidence,      
A time will come to find out what it means      
To know that you are losing what was yours,      
To know that you are being left behind;          80   
And then the long contempt of innocence—      
God bless you, boy!—don’t think the worse of it      
Because an old man chatters in the shade—      
Will all be like a story you have read      
In childhood and remembered for the pictures.          85   
   
And when the best friend of your life goes down,      
When first you know in him the slackening      
That comes, and coming always tells the end,—      
Now in a common word that would have passed      
Uncaught from any other lips than his,          90   
Now in some trivial act of every day,      
Done as he might have done it all along      
But for a twinging little difference      
That nips you like a squirrel’s teeth—oh, yes,      
Then you will understand it well enough.          95   
But oftener it comes in other ways;      
It comes without your knowing when it comes;      
You know that he is changing, and you know      
That he is going—just as I know now      
That Archibald is going, and that I         100   
Am staying.… Look at me, my boy,      
And when the time shall come for you to see      
That I must follow after him, try then      
To think of me, to bring me back again,      
Just as I was to-day. Think of the place         105   
Where we are sitting now, and think of me—      
Think of old Isaac as you knew him then,      
When you set out with him in August once      
To see old Archibald.”—The words come back      
Almost as Isaac must have uttered them,         110   
And there comes with them a dry memory      
Of something in my throat that would not move.      
   
If you had asked me then to tell just why      
I made so much of Isaac and the things      
He said, I should have gone far for an answer;         115   
For I knew it was not sorrow that I felt,      
Whatever I may have wished it, or tried then      
To make myself believe. My mouth was full      
Of words, and they would have been comforting      
To Isaac, spite of my twelve years, I think;         120   
But there was not in me the willingness      
To speak them out. Therefore I watched the ground;      
And I was wondering what made the Lord      
Create a thing so nervous as an ant,      
When Isaac, with commendable unrest,         125   
Ordained that we should take the road again—      
For it was yet three miles to Archibald’s,      
And one to the first pump. I felt relieved      
All over when the old man told me that;      
I felt that he had stilled a fear of mine         130   
That those extremities of heat and cold      
Which he had long gone through with Archibald      
Had made the man impervious to both;      
But Isaac had a desert somewhere in him,      
And at the pump he thanked God for all things         135   
That He had put on earth for men to drink,      
And he drank well,—so well that I proposed      
That we go slowly lest I learn too soon      
The bitterness of being left behind,      
And all those other things. That was a joke         140   
To Isaac, and it pleased him very much;      
And that pleased me—for I was twelve years old.      
   
At the end of an hour’s walking after that      
The cottage of old Archibald appeared.      
Little and white and high on a smooth round hill         145   
It stood, with hackmatacks and apple-trees      
Before it, and a big barn-roof beyond;      
And over the place—trees, house, fields and all—      
Hovered an air of still simplicity      
And a fragrance of old summers—the old style         150   
That lives the while it passes. I dare say      
That I was lightly conscious of all this      
When Isaac, of a sudden, stopped himself,      
And for the long first quarter of a minute      
Gazed with incredulous eyes, forgetful quite         155   
Of breezes and of me and of all else      
Under the scorching sun but a smooth-cut field,      
Faint yellow in the distance. I was young,      
But there were a few things that I could see,      
And this was one of them.—“Well, well!” said he;         160   
And “Archibald will be surprised, I think,”      
Said I. But all my childhood subtlety      
Was lost on Isaac, for he strode along      
Like something out of Homer—powerful      
And awful on the wayside, so I thought.         165   
Also I thought how good it was to be      
So near the end of my short-legged endeavor      
To keep the pace with Isaac for five miles.      
   
Hardly had we turned in from the main road      
When Archibald, with one hand on his back         170   
And the other clutching his huge-headed cane,      
Came limping down to meet us.—“Well! well! well!”      
Said he; and then he looked at my red face,      
All streaked with dust and sweat, and shook my hand,      
And said it must have been a right smart walk         175   
That we had had that day from Tilbury Town.—      
“Magnificent,” said Isaac; and he told      
About the beautiful west wind there was      
Which cooled and clarified the atmosphere.      
“You must have made it with your legs, I guess,”         180   
Said Archibald; and Isaac humored him      
With one of those infrequent smiles of his      
Which he kept in reserve, apparently,      
For Archibald alone. “But why,” said he,      
“Should Providence have cider in the world         185   
If not for such an afternoon as this?”      
And Archibald, with a soft light in his eyes,      
Replied that if he chose to go down cellar,      
There he would find eight barrels—one of which      
Was newly tapped, he said, and to his taste         190   
An honor to the fruit. Isaac approved      
Most heartily of that, and guided us      
Forthwith, as if his venerable feet      
Were measuring the turf in his own door-yard,      
Straight to the open rollway. Down we went,         195   
Out of the fiery sunshine to the gloom,      
Grateful and half sepulchral, where we found      
The barrels, like eight potent sentinels,      
Close ranged along the wall. From one of them      
A bright pine spile stuck out alluringly,         200   
And on the black flat stone, just under it,      
Glimmered a late-spilled proof that Archibald      
Had spoken from unfeigned experience.      
There was a fluted antique water-glass      
Close by, and in it, prisoned, or at rest,         205   
There was a cricket, of the brown soft sort      
That feeds on darkness. Isaac turned him out,      
And touched him with his thumb to make him jump,      
And then composedly pulled out the plug      
With such a practised hand that scarce a drop         210   
Did even touch his fingers. Then he drank      
And smacked his lips with a slow patronage      
And looked along the line of barrels there      
With a pride that may have been forgetfulness      
That they were Archibald’s and not his own.         215   
“I never twist a spigot nowadays,”      
He said, and raised the glass up to the light,      
“But I thank God for orchards.” And that glass      
Was filled repeatedly for the same hand      
Before I thought it worth while to discern         220   
Again that I was young, and that old age,      
With all his woes, had some advantages.      
“Now, Archibald,” said Isaac, when we stood      
Outside again, “I have it in my mind      
That I shall take a sort of little walk—         225   
To stretch my legs and see what you are doing.      
You stay and rest your back and tell the boy      
A story: Tell him all about the time      
In Stafford’s cabin forty years ago,      
When four of us were snowed up for ten days         230   
With only one dried haddock. Tell him all      
About it, and be wary of your back.      
Now I will go along.”—I looked up then      
At Archibald, and as I looked I saw      
Just how his nostrils widened once or twice         235   
And then grew narrow. I can hear today      
The way the old man chuckled to himself—      
Not wholesomely, not wholly to convince      
Another of his mirth,—as I can hear      
The lonely sigh that followed.—But at length         240   
He said: “The orchard now’s the place for us;      
We may find something like an apple there,      
And we shall have the shade, at any rate.”      
So there we went and there we laid ourselves      
Where the sun could not reach us; and I champed         245   
A dozen of worm-blighted astrakhans      
While Archibald said nothing—merely told      
The tale of Stafford’s cabin, which was good,      
Though “master chilly”—after his own phrase—      
Even for a day like that. But other thoughts         250   
Were moving in his mind, imperative,      
And writhing to be spoken: I could see      
The glimmer of them in a glance or two,      
Cautious, or else unconscious, that he gave      
Over his shoulder: … “Stafford and the rest—         255   
But that’s an old song now, and Archibald      
And Isaac are old men. Remember, boy,      
That we are old. Whatever we have gained,      
Or lost, or thrown away, we are old men.      
You look before you and we look behind,         260   
And we are playing life out in the shadow—      
But that’s not all of it. The sunshine lights      
A good road yet before us if we look,      
And we are doing that when least we know it;      
For both of us are children of the sun,         265   
Like you, and like the weed there at your feet.      
The shadow calls us, and it frightens us—      
We think; but there’s a light behind the stars      
And we old fellows who have dared to live,      
We see it—and we see the other things,         270   
The other things … Yes, I have seen it come      
These eight years, and these ten years, and I know      
Now that it cannot be for very long      
That Isaac will be Isaac. You have seen—      
Young as you are, you must have seen the strange         275   
Uncomfortable habit of the man?      
He’ll take my nerves and tie them in a knot      
Sometimes, and that’s not Isaac. I know that—      
And I know what it is: I get it here      
A little, in my knees, and Isaac—here.”         280   
The old man shook his head regretfully      
And laid his knuckles three times on his forehead.      
“That’s what it is: Isaac is not quite right.      
You see it, but you don’t know what it means:      
The thousand little differences—no,         285   
You do not know them, and it’s well you don’t;      
You’ll know them soon enough—God bless you, boy!—      
You’ll know them, but not all of them—not all.      
So think of them as little as you can:      
There’s nothing in them for you, or for me—         290   
But I am old and I must think of them;      
I’m in the shadow, but I don’t forget      
The light, my boy,—the light behind the stars.      
Remember that: remember that I said it;      
And when the time that you think far away         295   
Shall come for you to say it—say it, boy;      
Let there be no confusion or distrust      
In you, no snarling of a life half lived,      
Nor any cursing over broken things      
That your complaint has been the ruin of.         300   
Live to see clearly and the light will come      
To you, and as you need it.—But there, there,      
I’m going it again, as Isaac says,      
And I’ll stop now before you go to sleep.—      
Only be sure that you growl cautiously,         305   
And always where the shadow may not reach you.”      
   
Never shall I forget, long as I live,      
The quaint thin crack in Archibald’s voice,      
The lonely twinkle in his little eyes,      
Or the way it made me feel to be with him.         310   
I know I lay and looked for a long time      
Down through the orchard and across the road,      
Across the river and the sun-scorched hills      
That ceased in a blue forest, where the world      
Ceased with it. Now and then my fancy caught         315   
A flying glimpse of a good life beyond—      
Something of ships and sunlight, streets and singing,      
Troy falling, and the ages coming back,      
And ages coming forward: Archibald      
And Isaac were good fellows in old clothes,         320   
And Agamemnon was a friend of mine;      
Ulysses coming home again to shoot      
With bows and feathered arrows made another,      
And all was as it should be. I was young.      
   
So I lay dreaming of what things I would,         325   
Calm and incorrigibly satisfied      
With apples and romance and ignorance,      
And the still smoke from Archibald’s clay pipe.      
There was a stillness over everything,      
As if the spirit of heat had laid its hand         330   
Upon the world and hushed it; and I felt      
Within the mightiness of the white sun      
That smote the land around us and wrought out      
A fragrance from the trees, a vital warmth      
And fullness for the time that was to come,         335   
And a glory for the world beyond the forest.      
The present and the future and the past,      
Isaac and Archibald, the burning bush,      
The Trojans and the walls of Jericho,      
Were beautifully fused; and all went well         340   
Till Archibald began to fret for Isaac      
And said it was a master day for sunstroke.      
That was enough to make a mummy smile,      
I thought; and I remained hilarious,      
In face of all precedence and respect,         345   
Till Isaac (who had come to us unheard)      
Found he had no tobacco, looked at me      
Peculiarly, and asked of Archibald      
What ailed the boy to make him chirrup so.      
From that he told us what a blessed world         350   
The Lord had given us.—“But, Archibald,”      
He added, with a sweet severity      
That made me think of peach-skins and goose-flesh,      
“I’m half afraid you cut those oats of yours      
A day or two before they were well set.”         355   
“They were set well enough,” said Archibald,—      
And I remarked the process of his nose      
Before the words came out. “But never mind      
Your neighbor’s oats: you stay here in the shade      
And rest yourself while I go find the cards.         360   
We’ll have a little game of seven-up      
And let the boy keep count.”—“We’ll have the game,      
Assuredly,” said Isaac; “and I think      
That I will have a drop of cider, also.”      
   
They marched away together towards the house         365   
And left me to my childish ruminations      
Upon the ways of men. I followed them      
Down cellar with my fancy, and then left them      
For a fairer vision of all things at once      
That was anon to be destroyed again         370   
By the sound of voices and of heavy feet—      
One of the sounds of life that I remember,      
Though I forget so many that rang first      
As if they were thrown down to me from Sinai.      
   
So I remember, even to this day,         375   
Just how they sounded, how they placed themselves,      
And how the game went on while I made marks      
And crossed them out, and meanwhile made some Trojans.      
Likewise I made Ulysses, after Isaac,      
And a little after Flaxman. Archibald         380   
Was injured when he found himself left out,      
But he had no heroics, and I said so:      
I told him that his white beard was too long      
And too straight down to be like things in Homer.      
“Quite so,” said Isaac.—“Low,” said Archibald;         385   
And he threw down a deuce with a deep grin      
That showed his yellow teeth and made me happy.      
So they played on till a bell rang from the door,      
And Archibald said, “Supper.”—After that      
The old men smoked while I sat watching them         390   
And wondered with all comfort what might come      
To me, and what might never come to me;      
And when the time came for the long walk home      
With Isaac in the twilight, I could see      
The forest and the sunset and the sky-line,         395   
No matter where it was that I was looking:      
The flame beyond the boundary, the music,      
The foam and the white ships, and two old men      
Were things that would not leave me.—And that night      
There came to me a dream—a shining one,         400   
With two old angels in it. They had wings,      
And they were sitting where a silver light      
Suffused them, face to face. The wings of one      
Began to palpitate as I approached,      
But I was yet unseen when a dry voice         405   
Cried thinly, with unpatronizing triumph,      
“I’ve got you, Isaac; high, low, jack, and the game.”      
   
Isaac and Archibald have gone their way      
To the silence of the loved and well-forgotten.      
I knew them, and I may have laughed at them;         410   
But there’s a laughing that has honor in it,      
And I have no regret for light words now.      
Rather I think sometimes they may have made      
Their sport of me;—but they would not do that,      
They were too old for that. They were old men,         415   
And I may laugh at them because I knew them.

III. Captain Craig, Etc.   
3. The Return of Morgan and Fingal   
     
AND there we were together again—      
  Together again, we three:      
Morgan, Fingal, fiddle, and all,      
  They had come for the night with me.      
   
The spirit of joy was in Morgan’s wrist,           5   
  There were songs in Fingal’s throat;      
And secure outside, for the spray to drench,      
  Was a tossed and empty boat.      
   
And there were the pipes, and there was the punch,      
  And somewhere were twelve years;          10   
So it came, in the manner of things unsought,      
  That a quick knock vexed our ears.      
   
The night wind hovered and shrieked and snarled,      
  And I heard Fingal swear;      
Then I opened the door—but I found no more          15   
  Than a chalk-skinned woman there.      
   
I looked, and at last, “What is it?” I said—      
  “What is it that we can do?”      
But never a word could I get from her      
  But “You—you three—it is you!”          20   
   
Now the sense of a crazy speech like that      
  Was more than a man could make;      
So I said, “But we—we are what, we three?”      
  And I saw the creature shake.      
   
“Be quick!” she cried, “for I left her dead—          25   
  And I was afraid to come;      
But you, you three—God made it be—      
  Will ferry the dead girl home.      
   
“Be quick! be quick!—but listen to that      
  Who is that makes it?—hark!”          30   
But I heard no more than a knocking splash      
  And a wind that shook the dark.      
   
“It is only the wind that blows,” I said,      
  “And the boat that rocks outside.”      
And I watched her there, and I pitied her there—          35   
  “Be quick! be quick!” she cried.      
   
She cried so loud that her voice went in      
  To find where my two friends were;      
So Morgan came, and Fingal came,      
  And out we went with her.          40   
   
’T was a lonely way for a man to take      
  And a fearsome way for three;      
And over the water, and all day long,      
  They had come for the night with me.      
   
But the girl was dead, as the woman had said,          45   
  And the best we could see to do      
Was to lay her aboard. The north wind roared,      
  And into the night we flew.      
   
Four of us living and one for a ghost,      
  Furrowing crest and swell,          50   
Through the surge and the dark, for that faint far spark,      
  We ploughed with Azrael.      
   
Three of us ruffled and one gone mad,      
  Crashing to south we went;      
And three of us there were too spattered to care          55   
  What this late sailing meant.      
   
So down we steered and along we tore      
  Through the flash of the midnight foam:      
Silent enough to be ghosts on guard.      
  We ferried the dead girl home.          60   
   
We ferried her down to the voiceless wharf,      
  And we carried her up to the light;      
And we left the two to the father there,      
  Who counted the coals that night.      
   
Then back we steered through the foam again,          65   
  But our thoughts were fast and few;      
And all we did was to crowd the surge      
  And to measure the life we knew;—      
   
Till at last we came where a dancing gleam      
  Skipped out to us, we three,—          70   
And the dark wet mooring pointed home      
  Like a finger from the sea.      
   
Then out we pushed the teetering skiff      
  And in we drew to the stairs;      
And up we went, each man content          75   
  With a life that fed no cares.      
   
Fingers were cold and feet were cold,      
  And the tide was cold and rough;      
But the light was warm, and the room was warm,      
  And the world was good enough.          80   
   
And there were the pipes, and there was the punch,      
  More shrewd than Satan’s tears:      
Fingal had fashioned it, all by himself,      
  With a craft that comes of years.      
   
And there we were together again—          85   
  Together again, we three:      
Morgan, Fingal, fiddle, and all,      
  They were there for the night with me.

III. Captain Craig, Etc.   
4. Aunt Imogen   
     
AUNT IMOGEN was coming, and therefore      
The children—Jane, Sylvester, and Young George—      
Were eyes and ears; for there was only one      
Aunt Imogen to them in the whole world,      
And she was in it only for four weeks           5   
In fifty-two. But those great bites of time      
Made all September a Queen’s Festival;      
And they would strive, informally, to make      
The most of them.—The mother understood,      
And wisely stepped away. Aunt Imogen          10   
Was there for only one month in the year,      
While she, the mother,—she was always there;      
And that was what made all the difference.      
She knew it must be so, for Jane had once      
Expounded it to her so learnedly          15   
That she had looked away from the child’s eyes      
And thought; and she had thought of many things.      
   
There was a demonstration every time      
Aunt Imogen appeared, and there was more      
Than one this time. And she was at a loss          20   
Just how to name the meaning of it all:      
It puzzled her to think that she could be      
So much to any crazy thing alive—      
Even to her sister’s little savages      
Who knew no better than to be themselves;          25   
But in the midst of her glad wonderment      
She found herself besieged and overcome      
By two tight arms and one tumultuous head,      
And therewith half bewildered and half pained      
By the joy she felt and by the sudden love          30   
That proved itself in childhood’s honest noise.      
Jane, by the wings of sex, had reached her first;      
And while she strangled her, approvingly,      
Sylvester thumped his drum and Young George howled.      
But finally, when all was rectified,          35   
And she had stilled the clamor of Young George      
By giving him a long ride on her shoulders,      
They went together into the old room      
That looked across the fields; and Imogen      
Gazed out with a girl’s gladness in her eyes,          40   
Happy to know that she was back once more      
Where there were those who knew her, and at last      
Had gloriously got away again      
From cabs and clattered asphalt for a while;      
And there she sat and talked and looked and laughed          45   
And made the mother and the children laugh.      
Aunt Imogen made everybody laugh.      
   
There was the feminine paradox—that she      
Who had so little sunshine for herself      
Should have so much for others. How it was          50   
That she could make, and feel for making it,      
So much of joy for them, and all along      
Be covering, like a scar, and while she smiled,      
That hungering incompleteness and regret—      
That passionate ache for something of her own,          55   
For something of herself—she never knew.      
She knew that she could seem to make them all      
Believe there was no other part of her      
Than her persistent happiness; but the why      
And how she did not know. Still none of them          60   
Could have a thought that she was living down—      
Almost as if regret were criminal,      
So proud it was and yet so profitless—      
The penance of a dream, and that was good.      
Her sister Jane—the mother of little Jane,          65   
Sylvester, and Young George—might make herself      
Believe she knew, for she—well, she was Jane.      
   
Young George, however, did not yield himself      
To nourish the false hunger of a ghost      
That made no good return. He saw too much:          70   
The accumulated wisdom of his years      
Had so conclusively made plain to him      
The permanent profusion of a world      
Where everybody might have everything      
To do, and almost everything to eat,          75   
That he was jubilantly satisfied      
And all unthwarted by adversity.      
Young George knew things. The world, he had found out,      
Was a good place, and life was a good game—      
Particularly when Aunt Imogen          80   
Was in it. And one day it came to pass—      
One rainy day when she was holding him      
And rocking him—that he, in his own right,      
Took it upon himself to tell her so;      
And something in his way of telling it—          85   
The language, or the tone, or something else—      
Gripped like insidious fingers on her throat,      
And then went foraging as if to make      
A plaything of her heart. Such undeserved      
And unsophisticated confidence          90   
Went mercilessly home; and had she sat      
Before a looking glass, the deeps of it      
Could not have shown more clearly to her then      
Than one thought-mirrored little glimpse had shown,      
The pang that wrenched her face and filled her eyes          95   
With anguish and intolerable mist.      
The blow that she had vaguely thrust aside      
Like fright so many times had found her now:      
Clean-thrust and final it had come to her      
From a child’s lips at last, as it had come         100   
Never before, and as it might be felt      
Never again. Some grief, like some delight,      
Stings hard but once: to custom after that      
The rapture or the pain submits itself,      
And we are wiser than we were before.         105   
And Imogen was wiser; though at first      
Her dream-defeating wisdom was indeed      
A thankless heritage: there was no sweet,      
No bitter now; nor was there anything      
To make a daily meaning for her life—         110   
Till truth, like Harlequin, leapt out somehow      
From ambush and threw sudden savor to it—      
But the blank taste of time. There were no dreams,      
No phantoms in her future any more:      
One clinching revelation of what was         115   
One by-flash of irrevocable chance,      
Had acridly but honestly foretold      
The mystical fulfilment of a life      
That might have once … But that was all gone by:      
There was no need of reaching back for that:         120   
The triumph was not hers: there was no love      
Save borrowed love: there was no might have been.      
   
But there was yet Young George—and he had gone      
Conveniently to sleep, like a good boy;      
And there was yet Sylvester with his drum,         125   
And there was frowzle-headed little Jane;      
And there was Jane the sister, and the mother,—      
Her sister, and the mother of them all.      
They were not hers, not even one of them:      
She was not born to be so much as that,         130   
For she was born to be Aunt Imogen.      
Now she could see the truth and look at it;      
Now she could make stars out where once had palled      
A future’s emptiness; now she could share      
With others—ah, the others!—to the end         135   
The largess of a woman who could smile;      
Now it was hers to dance the folly down,      
And all the murmuring; now it was hers      
To be Aunt Imogen.—So, when Young George      
Woke up and blinked at her with his big eyes,         140   
And smiled to see the way she blinked at him,      
’T was only in old concord with the stars      
That she took hold of him and held him close,      
Close to herself, and crushed him till he laughed.

III. Captain Craig, Etc.   
5. The Klondike   
     
NEVER mind the day we left, or the day the women clung to us;      
All we need now is the last way they looked at us.      
Never mind the twelve men there amid the cheering—      
Twelve men or one man, ’t will soon be all the same;      
For this is what we know: we are five men together,           5   
Five left o’ twelve men to find the golden river.      
   
Far we came to find it out, but the place was here for all of us;      
Far, far we came, and here we have the last of us.      
We that were the front men, we that would be early,      
We that had the faith, and the triumph in our eyes:          10   
We that had the wrong road, twelve men together,—      
Singing when the devil sang to find the golden river.      
   
Say the gleam was not for us, but never say we doubted it;      
Say the wrong road was right before we followed it.      
We that were the front men, fit for all forage,—          15   
Say that while we dwindle we are front men still;      
For this is what we know tonight: we’re starving here together—      
Starving on the wrong road to find the golden river.      
   
Wrong, we say, but wait a little: hear him in the corner there;      
He knows more than we, and he’ll tell us if we listen there—          20   
He that fought the snow-sleep less than all the others      
Stays awhile yet, and he knows where he stays:      
Foot and hand a frozen clout, brain a freezing feather,      
Still he’s here to talk with us and to the golden river.      
   
“Flow,” he says, “and flow along, but you cannot flow away from us;          25   
All the world’s ice will never keep you far from us;      
Every man that heeds your call takes the way that leads him—      
The one way that’s his way, and lives his own life:      
Starve or laugh, the game goes on, and on goes the river;      
Gold or no, they go their way—twelve men together.          30   
   
“Twelve,” he says, “who sold their shame for a lure you call too fair for them—      
You that laugh and flow to the same word that urges them:      
Twelve who left the old town shining in the sunset,      
Left the weary street and the small safe days:      
Twelve who knew but one way out, wide the way or narrow:          35   
Twelve who took the frozen chance and laid their lives on yellow.      
   
“Flow by night and flow by day, nor ever once be seen by them;      
Flow, freeze, and flow, till time shall hide the bones of them;      
Laugh and wash their names away, leave them all forgotten,      
Leave the old town to crumble where it sleeps;          40   
Leave it there as they have left it, shining in the valley,—      
Leave the town to crumble down and let the women marry.      
   
“Twelve of us or five,” he says, “we know the night is on us now:      
Five while we last, and we may as well be thinking now:      
Thinking each his own thought, knowing, when the light comes,          45   
Five left or none left, the game will not be lost.      
Crouch or sleep, we go the way, the last way together:      
Five or none, the game goes on, and on goes the river.      
   
“For after all that we have done and all that we have failed to do,      
Life will be life and a world will have its work to do:          50   
Every man who follows us will heed in his own fashion      
The calling and the warning and the friends who do not know:      
Each will hold an icy knife to punish his heart’s lover,      
And each will go the frozen way to find the golden river.”      
   
There you hear him, all he says, and the last we’ll ever get from him.          55   
Now he wants to sleep, and that will be the best for him.      
Let him have his own way—no, you needn’t shake him—      
Your own turn will come, so let the man sleep.      
For this is what we know: we are stalled here together—      
Hands and feet and hearts of us, to find the golden river.          60   
   
And there’s a quicker way than sleep? … Never mind the looks of him:      
All he needs now is a finger on the eyes of him.      
You there on the left hand, reach a little over—      
Shut the stars away, or he’ll see them all night:      
He’ll see them all night and he’ll see them all tomorrow,          65   
Crawling down the frozen sky, cold and hard and yellow.      
   
Won’t you move an inch or two—to keep the stars away from him?      
—No, he won’t move, and there’s no need of asking him.      
Never mind the twelve men, never mind the women;      
Three while we last, we’ll let them all go;          70   
And we’ll hold our thoughts north while we starve here together,      
Looking each his own way to find the golden river.

III. Captain Craig, Etc.   
6. The Growth of “Lorraine”   
     
I

  WHILE I stood listening, discreetly dumb,      
  Lorraine was having the last word with me:      
  “I know,” she said, “I know it, but you see      
  Some creatures are born fortunate, and some      
Are born to be found out and overcome,—           5   
Born to be slaves, to let the rest go free;      
And if I’m one of them (and I must be)      
You may as well forget me and go home.      
   
“You tell me not to say these things, I know,      
But I should never try to be content:          10   
I’ve gone too far; the life would be too slow.      
Some could have done it—some girls have the stuff;      
But I can’t do it: I don’t know enough.      
I’m going to the devil.”—And she went.      
   
II

I DID not half believe her when she said          15   
That I should never hear from her again;      
Nor when I found a letter from Lorraine,      
Was I surprised or grieved at what I read:      
“Dear friend, when you find this, I shall be dead.      
You are too far away to make me stop.          20   
They say that one drop—think of it, one drop!—      
Will be enough,—but I’ll take five instead.      
   
“You do not frown because I call you friend,      
For I would have you glad that I still keep      
Your memory, and even at the end—          25   
Impenitent, sick, shattered—cannot curse      
The love that flings, for better or for worse,      
This worn-out, cast-out flesh of mine to sleep.”