Page:Captain Craig; a book of poems.djvu/52

38 Green leaf to yellow leaf—or chlorophyl To xanthophyl, to be more scientific,— So speed me one more stein. You may believe That I'm a mendicant, but I am not: For though it look to you that I go begging, The truth is I go giving—giving all My strength and all my personality, My wisdom and experience—myself, To make it final—for your preservation; Though I be not the one thing or the other, Though I strike between the sunset and the dawn, Though I be cliff-rubbed wreckage on the shoals Of Circumstance,—doubt not that I comprise, With all of my disintegrated zeal, Far more than my appearance. Here he comes; Now drink to good old Pretzel! Drink down Pretzel! Quousque tandem, Pretzel, and O Lord, How long! But let regret go hang: the good Die first, and of the poor did many cease To be. Beethoven after Wordsworth. Prosit! There were geniuses among the trilobites, And I suspect that I was one of them.’

"How much of him was earnest and how much Fantastic, I know not; nor do I need Profounder knowledge to exonerate