Page:Captain Craig; a book of poems.djvu/70

56 He found himself and soon began to chant, With a fitful shift at thin sonorousness The jocund instrument; and had he been Definitively parceling to us All Kimberly and half of Ballarat, The lordly quaver of his poor old words Could not have been the more magniloquent. No promise of dead carbon or of gold, However, flashed in ambush to corrupt us:

"I, Captain Craig, abhorred iconoclast, Sage-errant, favored of the Cosmic Joke, And self-reputed humorist at large, Do now, confessed of my world-worshiping, Time-questioning, sun-fearing, and heart-yielding, Approve and unreservedly devise To you and your assigns for evermore, God's universe and yours. If I had won What first I sought, I might have made you beam By giving less; but now I make you laugh By giving more than what had made you beam, And it is well. No man has ever done The deed of humor that God promises, But now and then we know tragedians Reform, and in denial too divine For sacrifice, too firm for ecstasy, Record in jolly letters or in books