Page:Captain Craig; a book of poems.djvu/27

Rh 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, 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, 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 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 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 had the sunlight reach him. While I slept, That thought reshaped itself to friendly dreams, And in the morning it was with me still.