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.
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 H
ieronymus 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 —
Works of Edwin Arlington Robinson Page 11
