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 |
