Page:Captain Craig; a book of poems.djvu/45

Rh Has laughed, I'll tell you how the colors change— The colors that are changeless, colorless."

I fear I may have answered Captain Craig's Epistle Number One with what he chose, Good-humoredly but anxiously, to take For something that was not all reverence; From the tone of Number Two it seemed almost As if the flanges of the old man's faith Had slipped the treacherous rails of my allegiance And left him by the roadside, humorously Upset, with nothing more convivial To do than be facetious and austere:—

"If you did not like Don César de Bazan There must be some imperfection in your vitals. Flamboyant and old-fashioned? Overdone? Romantico-robustious?—Dear young man, There are fifteen thousand ways to be one-sided, And I have indicated two of them Already. Now you bait me with a third— As if it were a spider with nine legs; But what it is that you would have me do, What fatherly wrath you most anticipate, I lack the needed impulse to discern.