Page:Captain Craig; a book of poems.djvu/20

6 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 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, 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, 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, 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,