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
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.
<
br /> 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
Works of Edwin Arlington Robinson Page 13
