Adroitly down upon the back of him,
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,
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--
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 him work,
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;
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?
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
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
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--
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;
Too humorous, we mean.”--“Too humorous?”
The Captain answered; “I approve of that.
Proceed.”--We were not glad for Killigrew.
“Well,” he went on, “’twas only this. You see
My dream this morning was a droll one too:
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.
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
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,
I might have guessed it. Never mind your dream,
But let me go to sleep.”--For a moment then
There was half a frown on Killigrew’s good face,
But he turned it to a smile.--“Not quite,” said he;
“The songs that he sang first were sorrowful,
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 kind of--well, say mystic cheerfulness,
Or give it almost any trumped-up name,
Pervaded him; for slowly, as he sang,
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,
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
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
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....
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;
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
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!
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
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
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?
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
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
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
To make placebos of. The marrowy sense
Of a slow November storm 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,
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 to-day
Strong thoughts on all your faces--no regret,
No fine commiseration--oh, not that,
Not that! Nor say of me, when I am gone,
That I was cold and harsh, for I was warm
To strangeness, and for you.... Say not like that
Of me--nor think of me that I reproached
The friends of my tight battles and hard years,
But say that I did love them to the last
And in my love reproved them for the grief
They did not--for they dared not--throw away.
Courage, my boys,--courage, is what you need:
Courage that is not all flesh-recklessness,
But earnest of the world and of the soul--
First of the soul; for a man may be as brave
As Ajax in the fury of his arms,
And in the midmost warfare of his thoughts
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
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
As of a sun-shut mind; for ’tis 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
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--
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,
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!
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.
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,
And we knew that he would speak in the old way.
We watched him, and I listened. The man smiled
And looked about him--not regretfully,
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,
And we were glad. The world had scattered ways
For us to take, we knew; but for the time
That one snug room where the big beech logs roared smooth
Defiance to the cold rough rain outside
Sufficed. There were no scattered ways for us
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
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
For making us to see that we were not
(Like certain unapproved inferiors
Whom we had known, and having known might name)
Abominable flotsam. But the best
And wisest occupation, we had learned,--
At work, at home, or at “The Chrysalis,”
Companioned or unfriended, winged or chained,--
Was always to perpetuate the bead.
So Plunket, who had knowledge of all sorts,
Yet hardly ever spoke, began to plink
_O tu, Palermo!_--quaintly, with his nails,--
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,
Made roaring chords and acrobatic runs--
To charge his fingers and the strings, he said,--
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
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--
Stands out like one great verse of a good song,
One strain that sings itself beyond the rest
For the 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,
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,
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--
A windy, dreary day with a cold white shine
That only gummed the tumbled frozen ruts
We tramped upon. The road was hard and long,
But we had what we knew to comfort us,
And we had the large humor of the thing
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.
ISAAC AND ARCHIBALD
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 geniuses.
I do not think of either of them now
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
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
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
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;
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;
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;
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
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.
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
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
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,
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
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
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 it brings
To this old heart of mine an ache that you
Have not yet lived enough to know about.
But even unto you, with 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;
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.
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,
Now in some trivial act of every day,
Done as he might have done it all along
But for a twinging little difference
That bites you like a squirrel’s teeth--oh, yes,
Then you will understand it well enough.
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
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
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,
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 reached far for an answer;
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;
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,
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
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
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
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
It stood, with hackmatacks and apple-trees
Before it, and a big barn-roof beyond;
And over the place--trees, houses, fields and all--
Hovered an air of still simplicity
And a fragrance of old summers--the old style
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
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;
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.
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
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
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,”
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
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
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,
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 convincingly,
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,
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 practiced hand that scarce a drop
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:
“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
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--
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
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
The way his nostrils widened once or twice
And then grew narrow. I can hear to-day
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
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 sunlight could not reach us; and I champed
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
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
Would have had no story of their own to tell;
They would have left it all for others--yes--
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,
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,
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,
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
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.”
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,
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--
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
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.
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,
And always where the shadow may not reach you.”