Page:Captain Craig; a book of poems.djvu/68

54 ’Attend the testament of Captain Craig: Good citizens, good fathers and your sons, Good mothers and your daughters.' I should say so. 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 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, 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. 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